German sportswear giant Adidas has announced it is ending its collaboration with Kanye West following anti-Semitic and racist statements the rapper, also known as Ye, has made in recent weeks. Twitter and Instagram have expelled the singer for posting a threatening post against the Jewish community. The German company assures in a statement that “after studying it in depth” it has made the decision to “immediately end the collaboration with Ye”. “Adidas does not tolerate anti-Semitism or any other form of hate speech,” adds this company, which had been under pressure for days on social networks from human rights activists to cut ties with the artist. West’s comments are “unacceptable and dangerous,” he adds.
West has starred in several controversial episodes in recent weeks, the most striking of which was appearing at a fashion show in Paris wearing a T-shirt that read white lives matter (“White lives matter”), a slogan often used by white supremacists in the United States in response to the anti-racist movement Black lives matter (“Black lives matter”). After that incident, the rapper assured in an interview on the Drink Champs podcast that George Floyd died of drug use and not of suffocation when he was detained by a police officer in 2020. The trial for Floyd’s death has become a point of turning point in the fight against abuses by security forces in the United States. The policeman who arrested him was sentenced to 22 years in prison for kneeling on the victim’s neck for more than nine minutes while she screamed that he was suffocating. Floyd’s family has announced a defamation lawsuit against West, claiming $250 million for saying that the cause of his death was the use of fentanyl and not police violence.
Adidas had been claiming for days that it was analyzing the facts. Finally, he has decided to break the contract with West. This implies that he stops producing the rapper’s brand shoes and clothing and that he is not going to pay him anything more for his services. The company states in the statement that it is “the sole owner of all design rights of existing products (…) within the framework of the association” with the singer, in a phrase that seems to anticipate a possible legal battle. West has also been abandoned this week by his representative agency, CAA, after the cascade of brands that have announced that they are no longer collaborating with him, such as Balenciaga.
Adidas shares have fallen more than 4% after knowing the end of the collaboration with West and were already coming from a significant decline of 9.5% in the German Stock Market after the manufacturer cut its profit forecasts for this year. The three-band company is being hit hard by the slowdown in global consumption. The fall in demand in China and the accumulation of inventories have upset their previous forecasts. Adidas acknowledges that cutting West will have “a short-term negative impact” that it calculates at up to 250 million dollars in the company’s net income “given the high seasonality of the fourth quarter.”
West first signed for Adidas in 2013, after years collaborating with arch rival Nike. In 2016, the German company signed a collaboration agreement with the artist that he defined as “the most significant in history” between a personality who is not an athlete and a sports brand. The rapper’s addition allowed Adidas to cut Nike’s ground in the US market.
West has accused Adidas managers of “profiting at his expense” since he launched the Yeezy line jointly with the company, which includes several models of sneakers and different collections of sportswear in which he participates as a designer. The Yeezy is currently one of the most demanded models on the market, and one of the most expensive: it is sold in the United States for between 200 and 700 dollars. According to the specialized press, the collaboration with the rapper reports to Adidas between 7 and 12% of its total footwear turnover. The Yeezy line represents between 1,000 and 2,000 million of the company’s annual sales, says analyst Omar Saad of Evercore ISI, who in a recent note to clients pointed out: “We see a great risk around the Yeezy franchise,” according to Reuters. .
Pressure has been mounting on the Bavaria-based company. Nearly 170,000 people have signed a petition in Change.org to stop collaborating with West. This week a photo has gone viral on networks in which a group of white supremacists is seen in Los Angeles with a sign that reads “Kanye is right with the Jews” that has provoked reactions of condemnation in Germany and in all the world. Among other things, West posted on his Twitter account, before it was blocked by the social network, that he was going to go into “mode.”death with 3 against the Jews.” He then explained that it was a mistake and that instead of writing death (death, in English) wanted to write “def con”. DEFCON 3 is one of the alert levels of the US armed forces and also a popular expression that indicates that urgent action is required.
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