A year on from the costly termination of Adidas’ Yeezy partnership with Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, a report by The New York Times has laid bare the extent to which top Adidas executives were aware of the rapper and designer’s problematic behaviour, including his use of antisemitic language and verbal abuse of the brand’s employees, according to the report.
Citing previously undisclosed internal records and information from former Adidas employees, it also detailed the extent to which the German sportswear giant sought to appease Ye, despite his increasingly combative behaviour. Beyond the royalties and cash Ye received, Adidas reportedly agreed to a $100 million annual fund that was officially for marketing but that Ye was able to spend “with little oversight.”
Adidas terminated its partnership with the rapper in 2022 after a series of public outbursts that included antisemitic comments and taunts of Adidas’ leadership. That year, Yeezy sales were on track to reach $1.8 billion, according to the Times.
But previous reporting by other outlets and the new account by the Times indicate that the company overlooked the rapper’s behaviour for years. As early as 2013, at a meeting at Adidas’ Herzogenaurach headquarters, soon after the brand and Ye formalised their partnership, Ye drew a swastika symbol on a sketch of a prototype sneaker design to show his displeasure at the proposed designs to Adidas staff, the Times reported. Over the years, Adidas instituted measures to help staff working directly with Ye, it added, such as rotating people on and off the frontlines of dealing with the artist, assigning a human-resources official to the group, giving staff a subscription to a meditation app and holding sessions akin to group therapy.
Since ending its collaboration with Ye, Adidas has been selling off the stockpile of Yeezy shoes it had already produced, significantly reducing the financial fallout it faced. Recently, new chief executive Bjorn Gulden apologised for comments he made on a podcast where he said Ye didn’t mean his antisemitic remarks.
Adidas told the Times it “has no tolerance for hate speech and offensive behaviour, which is why the company terminated the Adidas Yeezy partnership.”
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Unpacking Adidas’ Surprise Yeezy Coup
After severing ties with Ye, Adidas was left to deal with $1.3 billion worth of unsold merchandise, which it considered destroying but decided to sell instead, beginning with a first drop in May. That turned out to be the right decision.
