John Fogarty: Gaza, Allianz, and the GAA — when sport can no longer look the other way
Allianz have been synonymous with the GAA's leagues over any years. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile
Fifteen years ago, the National Leagues were rebranded as the Allianz Leagues. Few eyebrows were raised at the GAA giving away part of the title. The name of the German global insurance firm had been synonymous with the competitions since 2000, the year after they bought out the previous backers Church & General.
Allianz were standard-bearers. We’d often write about how understanding they were when the leagues were being used and abused by teams or not given the billing they deserved. Yet they abided because they and the GAA considered each other part of the same fabric.
It helped that they were represented by good people like former Allianz chief executive Brendan Murphy and customer manager Donal Bollard, an ex-Dublin footballer. They might have been a multibillion company but there was always enough Irish sensibility to ensure they got the GAA.
The perception of that intimacy began to change this past July with the publication of a report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesa Albanese. The Italian lawyer named Allianz as one of a number of companies profiteering from the war in Gaza by buying up Israeli treasury bonds.
On foot of it, a movement among whose protagonists include Dublin and Meath footballers Dr David Hickey and Colm O’Rourke called for the GAA to sever its partnership with Allianz and the organisation has responded by charging its ethics and integrity body with reviewing the relationship.
Albanese’s report cited ethical financial campaign website BankTrack’s claim that a US arm of Allianz bought almost $1billion in “war bonds”. Her work read: “As the main source of finance for Israel’s State budget, treasury bonds have played a critical role in funding the ongoing assault on Gaza. From 2022 to 2024, the Israeli military budget grew from 4.2% to 8.3% of GDP, driving the public budget into a 6.8% deficit Israel funded this ballooning budget by increasing its bond issuance, including $8bn in March 2024 and $5bn in February 2025, alongside issuances on its domestic shekel market.
“Some of the world’s largest banks, including BNP Paribas and Barclays, stepped in to boost market confidence by underwriting these international and domestic treasury bonds, allowing Israel to contain the interest rate premium, despite a credit downgrade. Asset management firms – including Blackrock ($68 million), Vanguard ($546m) and Allianz’s asset management subsidiary PIMCO ($960m) – were among at least 400 investors from 36 countries who purchased them.”
The report added Allianz also had invested in shares and bonds “impacted in the occupation and genocide. It continued: ”Allianz holds at least $7.3bn and AXA, despite some divestment decisions, still invests at least $4.09bn in tracked companies named in this report. Their insurance policies also underwrite the risks other companies necessarily take when operating in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, thus enabling the commission of human rights abuses and ‘de-risking’ their operational environment.” There are several prominent GAA officials and officers who found the report alarming, if not discomforting yet some have been advised by some authorities to not create a problem where there is none.
“We all condemn what’s going on in Gaza but where do you draw the line?” is a phrase we have heard time and again from GAA sources since its ethics and integrity committee were charged with reviewing the association’s relationship with Allianz. Too frequently, to be truthful. If a line can’t be drawn, it will never be drawn.
It is not à la carte offence: it is a symbolic move to demonstrate association with genocide is not something the GAA can tolerate of its biggest sponsor. Allianz’s lobbyists can argue they are being made an example of and resort to whataboutery but in this case it’s because few trusted Allianz more than the GAA.
Nobody should expect all ties to be cut. Hundreds, if not thousands of clubs, counties and units also have policies with Allianz. They underwrite the association’s own injury benefit fund too. Primarily, what the movement is seeking from the GAA is to discontinue its sponsorship agreement with Allianz.
Ending that commercial aspect is the focus of the motion put forward by Offaly club Ferbane, which has been backed by the county and was last week endorsed by the Tyrone County Board. Similar recommendations will be voted on and likely supported at forthcoming annual county conventions.
If Allianz are retained as sponsors of the league and associate backers of the All-Ireland football championship, there will be boycotts and protests unless something is done. What is that something? If the company were to publicly announce they will desist from purchasing more Israeli bonds, it would be a considerable gesture.
To expect an insurance giant worth nearly €140bn to simply divest the investments they have would be like trying to turn the Titanic. At the same time, it isn’t enough for Allianz Ireland to suggest that it is only a small cog in the machine.
This is not a matter either they or the GAA can wish away. Something must give.
john.fogarty@examiner.ie
On the stage of the RDS on Friday night, David Clifford recalled reviewing his 2024 season in a frank conversation with Jack O’Connor at the end of last year.
But it was a syndicated interview earlier that day to mark his third footballer of the year award that gave some more insight into that conversation. “Jack and myself sat down at the end of 2024, we laid it all out on the table, really as to why it didn't go well for Kerry and for me, too.”
“Kerry” was the operative word in that sentence. It's in the opinions of the likes of Clifford, Seán O’Shea and Gavin White that O’Connor places so much store. It was they who helped convince him to stay around for this past season as it was again to extend his term in charge.
But Clifford is clearly finding his voice off the field too. He knew the weight his words would carry when after the win over Cavan he called on supporters to get behind the team ahead of the All-Ireland quarter-final against Armagh.
His plea worked and in the dressing room later that day in Killarney, Clifford issued another rallying cry. “David spoke for probably 10 minutes,” recalled O’Connor. “When David speaks everyone listens and kind of follows him. It helped. It was a huge help, the fact that he was playing really well himself.”
At the All-Stars, a keen Kerry observer stressed how important Pomeroy in February was for the team this year. Not just the win over Tyrone but Clifford striking three goals in his first taste of the new rules.
That great photograph of him with his left hand raised to acknowledge the crowd as he left the field followed by kids gave the appearance of a man now more at ease with his pre-eminent standing in the game. How true it was.
You couldn’t call it a walk-out – they stayed for a large part of the meal afterwards – but watching their Cork All Star hurling nominees get up and leave The RDS en masse with their partners was difficult to ignore on Friday.
Most player groups largely stayed to their own but the Munster champions and All-Ireland runners-up didn’t appear to be in the mood to stick around any longer than they had to.
Not that it seemed like a message was being sent out (many of them were in good spirits), but we couldn’t help thinking back to when Cork were referenced as cliquey by Henry Shefflin when they were in the pomp 20 years ago.
“I remember bristling at the '05 All Stars function at the way they stuck together on one side of the room,” the Kilkenny star recalled in a newspaper column 10 years later. “They were champions, the centre of attention. You'd be looking across, thinking, 'Who do they think they are?'” That would have chimed with recounts of the Railway Cup in Boston earlier that month where they also kept to themselves.
Cork would have every reason to feel 2025 has to be parked and maybe the conclusion of the All Stars does exactly that. Led by a new manager Ben O’Connor, who along with Shefflin was a winner on that All-Stars night in Dublin’s CityWest Hotel in 2005, they will obviously be keen to move on.
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