The Boca Raton-based PGA Tour Champions tournament "won't carry the name that has drawn protests for years" after Munich-based insurance company Allianz officially "didn't renew its contract" following this year's event, according to Lisa Huriash of the South Florida SUN-SENTINEL. Allianz had sponsored the event "for the past decade." Tournament organizers said that the event "drew as many as 25,000 fans on average each year." Allianz External Communications Manager Jeff Faust said, "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." Pro Links Sports Tournament Coordinator Steve Marino, whose company manages the tournament, said that it "will now begin its search for a new sponsor." For now, the tournament will be "renamed the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Championship." Marino said that the hospital was "chosen as the new name because it has been the main benefactor of the charity tournament" since '07, raising more than $1.4M (South Florida SUN-SENTINEL, 4/25). The AP's Spencer & Anderson noted Holocaust survivors "celebrated the end" of Allianz' sponsorship of the tournament. Allianz said that recent protests "had nothing to do with no longer sponsoring the tournament." A new sponsor is "expected to be named soon" (AP, 4/24). In Miami, Jay Weaver notes at the tournament in February, more than 100 protesters, including relatives and supporters, "held up signs and chanted 'Survivors Can’t Wait'" outside the tourney. For the past seven years, hundreds of survivors and relatives have "decried Allianz’s sponsorship" of the event, claiming it should be "ousted because it has failed to pay billions of dollars in life policies purchased by European Jews before World War II" (MIAMI HERALD, 4/25).
