Adidas surrendered $2 billion in annual revenue—approximately 40% of its profits—in order to sever ties with Ye (the rapper formerly known as Kanye West) over his recent series of anti-Semitic comments, according to a new report in Bloomberg.
Going behind the scenes of the German sporting goods giant’s decision to end the “Yeezy” brand partnership with the recording artist, the report stated, “Some of the company’s top executives hesitated because they first wanted to obtain opinions from outside law firms in the U.S. that if Adidas went ahead with the termination of the Ye partnership, it wouldn’t be deemed as an obstruction of an ongoing court mediation process.”
“Still others disagreed with that stance, feeling that Ye’s behavior had become so offensive that it merited immediately cutting ties,” the report stated.
Ultimately, Adidas executives decided to “obliterate $2B in annual revenue” so that the company could make a clean break with West, Bloomberg reporter Kim Bhasin tweeted.
At Adidas HQ in Bavaria, execs waited for the go-ahead from 2 American law firms. Once in, top brass held an undramatic two-minute phone call and decided to obliterate $2B in annual revenue.
Inside Adidas in the final days of Yeezy, from @TimLoh & I:https://t.co/CtnEezbmF6
— Kim Bhasin (@KimBhasin) November 1, 2022
The anti-Semitism scandal surrounding Ye began when he tweeted that he was “going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.” The Bloomberg report comes after Forbes reported that Ye’s net worth dropped from $2 billion to $400 million after Adidas ended its partnership with him.
Meanwhile, the film and television studio MRC halted plans to distribute its recently completed Kanye West-themed documentary, and professional athletes Jaylen Brown and Aaron Donald left Ye’s agency, Donda Sports.
