Nutanix Pulls Iditarod Sponsorship After PETA Appeal

For Immediate Release:
March 8, 2022

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After hearing from PETA, locally based computer software company Nutanix quickly confirmed that its new sponsorship of the Iditarod—the notorious dog-sled race in which more than 150 dogs have died, most commonly after inhaling their own vomit—will end.

“Nutanix did the right thing by shutting down its support of the cruel Iditarod,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on the race’s remaining sponsors, who are likely as unaware of the dogs’ misery as Nutanix was, to see the writing on the wall and pull their support as well.”

More than 30 dogs have been pulled from this year’s race during just the first few days, and during the 2021 race, nearly 200 dogs were removed from the trail because of exhaustion, illness, injury, or other causes, leaving the remaining ones to work even harder. The Iditarod’s official death toll doesn’t include countless others who were killed simply because they weren’t fast enough or who died during the off-season while chained to dilapidated boxes or plastic barrels in the bitter cold, a practice exposed in a PETA undercover investigation.

Nutanix joins ExxonMobil—a former major sponsor that paid the race $250,000 a year—as well as Millennium Hotels and Resorts, Jack Daniel’s, Coca-Cola, Wells Fargo, Alaska Airlines, and dozens of other companies in cutting ties with the Iditarod. Only a few major corporate sponsors, such as Liberty Media subsidiary GCI, remain—and PETA recently bought stock in Liberty Broadband to push it to drop its sponsorship. In thanks, PETA is sending Nutanix a box of delicious dog paw–shaped vegan chocolates.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.