Allianz ends sponsorship of Boca golf tournament

The world’s pro golf legends will return to Boca Raton next year, but the tournament won’t carry the name that has drawn protests for years.

The PGA Tour Champions event will no longer be called the Allianz Championship after Munich-based insurance company Allianz didn’t renew its contract.

For the past decade, Allianz was the sponsor of the professional, age-50-and-older tournament at the Broken Sound Club.

Tournament organizers said the seven-day event drew as many as 25,000 fans on average each year to watch golfing notables such as Fred Couples, John Daly, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Jose Maria Olazabal and local Hall of Famer Bernhard Langer.

Allianz has “had a great experience during our 10 years in the Boca Raton area,” said Jeff Faust, a company spokesman. “While our experience has been positive, we are taking a fresh look at our brand and advertising approach and have decided to move in a new direction.”

Holocaust survivors said Monday they considered it good news that the tourney would get a new name. For the past seven years they had protested Allianz’s sponsorship, saying the company didn’t honor Holocaust-era life insurance claims on the basis that heirs could not produce original policies and death certificates.

An economist for the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, who studied what was owed and who sold it, had testified before Congress that Allianz was one of several German companies that still owed money, said Samuel Dubbin, a Miami lawyer of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation USA. The economist said publicly the amount had grown to $2.5 billion in unpaid claims, Dubbin said.

Protests have resulted outside the tourney each year, including this past February, when more than 150 survivors and their supporters came out to hold signs.

The company has said it has made good on all claims it was required to pay by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.

Faust said the company began its compensation efforts in the 1950s. He added, “The protests did not play a role in our decision to end our sponsorship.”

Dubbin said Holocaust survivors were pleased. “Allianz will no longer be causing them anguish using a major South Florida city as a billboard to promote itself as a good corporate citizen,” Dubbin said.

Steve Marino, tournament coordinator for Pro Links Sports, which is the management company for the tournament, said Monday it will now begin its search for a new sponsor.

For now, the Allianz Championship will be renamed the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Championship.

Marino said the hospital was chosen as the new name because it has been the main benefactor of the charity tournament since 2007, raising more than $1.4 million.

The Boca Chamber of Commerce estimates the economic impact combined over the last decade is $150 million. “That includes everything — hotels, restaurants,” said Jordi Gerking, chamber spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, the debate over Allianz is not over. In January, members of Congress, including Florida’s Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, reintroduced a bill that would let Holocaust survivors sue insurance companies in U.S. courts.

Backers of the legislation said that a prior process was inadequate and allowed insurance companies too much leeway to reject claims. On Monday, Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement she wants Holocaust survivors’ cases to go before the U.S. court system.

“Today will mark the beginning of a renewed effort for all of the next steps the survivors need,” Ros-Lehtinen said. “We can no longer sit idly by and allow these survivors to continue to be victimized and denied their day in court.”

LYNNE SLADKY/AP Holocaust survivor David Schaecter speaks during a news conference Monday after Munich-based insurance company Allianz decided not to renew its contract as sponsor of the PGA Tour Champions event.