Arsenal, the English Premier League football club, has a new shirt sleeve sponsor. The current league leaders have inked a deal with Deel, a payroll and human resources SaaS platform.
“Deel’s logo will appear on the left sleeve of our home, away, and third shirts from the start of next season. In doing so, Deel will be the second global brand to be featured on the sleeve of one of football’s most recognizable shirts,” the club wrote in a blog post.
The HR platform replaces the Visit Rwanda brand in a multi-year partnership valued at about $24.3 million, with bonuses. Beyond sponsorship, Deel will also provide its services to the football club.
“Arsenal and Deel are already working closely together, and the club will be rolling out Deel’s platform across its workforce and HR operations in the coming months,” stated Alex Bouaziz, Co-Founder and CEO of Deel.
Deel is a private company owned primarily by its co-founders, Alex Bouaziz (CEO) and Shuo Wang (CRO), alongside major venture capital investors.
Alex Bouaziz is a French-Israeli entrepreneur, and according to the company’s website, Alex spent his childhood between Paris and Tel Aviv. He has also studied at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and currently resides in Tel Aviv.
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For some Arsenal fans, this sleeve partnership means their favorite club is shifting from one sponsor complicit in state-sponsored violence to another tied to a country currently carrying out genocide.
Before the Visit Rwanda partnership ended officially last year, DR Congo appealed to Arsenal, PSG, and Bayern Munich, who are also sponsored by the brand, to end their “blood-stained” deals amid a worsening humanitarian crisis in the country.
Some Arsenal fans have taken to social media to register their disappointment, stating that the fanbase cannot feign ignorance in the compromised nature of the new sleeve sponsorship.
The new sponsor is also fighting money laundering accusations. Court documents in the Rippling-Deel lawsuit allege that Deel used company funds to pay a former Rippling employee accused of spying for Deel.
According to the filing, Deel transferred $6,000 from a corporate account to the Revolut account of Alba Basha, wife of Deel COO Dan Westgarth, and 56 seconds later the same amount was allegedly sent to the accused employee, Keith O’Brien. Phillippe Bouaziz, father of the CEO Alex, is a named RICO defendant in this lawsuit.
