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On Eurovision's main sponsor - Moroccanoil (lemmy.ml)
submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/eurovision
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I'd previously assumed that the logo that showed up on the title screens for Moroccanoil was just another state owned oil company putting sponsorship money into random things, but the haircare ad at the end of yesterday's broadcast let me to do some investigating.

It turns out Moroccanoil is an Israeli company and I haven't seen many people talking about the potential conflict of interest here that might explain the EBU's shady behaviour this year.

I did find this article about them from 2015 which links to a video of sales reps from the company partying in what "may be" the occupied west bank. They also do appear on various BDS lists.

There is also this article from The Sun which does connect this to Eurovision this year, but it's from the sun so honestly that just makes the whole thing seem less credible.

Given the lack of information that I've found, I'm wondering what people here think? Do you know anything else about this? Do you think the EBU's actions are related to this sponsorship? Do we even care because their behaviour was shitty whether their motivation was from the sponsorship or more directly political?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

It looks like the brand is owned by Moroccanoil Israel Ltd, according to this source: https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.moroccanoil_israel_ltd.e4e53c2d6638312e6f0b70c68a8cf55e.html#:~:text=MOROCCANOIL%20ISRAEL%20LTD%20is%20located,and%20Druggists'%20Sundries%20Merchant%20Wholesalers

The story on the About page of the article lists only one co-founder, Carmen Tal, who lives in Canada and bought the original business to sell their products outside of Israel. She says in several interviews that she found the products while visiting or living in Tel Aviv, examples listed here:

https://www.salonmagazine.ca/business-a-chat-with-moroccanoil-co-founder-carmen-tal/

https://venturesafrica.com/mining-liquid-gold-carmen-tal-ceo-moroccanoil/

So the company is originally Israeli, only sells to certain countries and no countries besides Israel in the Middle East (as listed on their webpage, as Israel is literally the only country they list under the Middle East section), and is still registered as being in Israel as far as I can see. They do seem to have gone to great lengths to try to hide that fact on their About page though, which I find odd.