After continuing pressure, Adidas has finally announced it is cutting ties with Kanye West over his anti-Semitic rants.
The Guardian has reported that Adida’s partnership with West brought $AU1.7 billion in revenue to the brand, and cutting ties will cost the sportswear giant at least $AU250 million.
In a statement, the sportswear giant said: “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech. Ye’s recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous, violating the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect and fairness.
“After a thorough review, the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop all payments to Ye and his companies. Adidas will stop the Adidas Yeezy business with immediate effect.”
Adidas is the last major brand to cut ties with the famous rapper. The clothing chain Gap has previously cut relations with West.
US Vogue has also announced it is no longer working with West, and high-fashion brand Balenciaga has also axed its relationship with West.
Adidas being slow to the punch has been much talked about online. West has been making headlines for months for saying salacious and horrible things, but Adidas stood by him.
So what changed? Well, the straw that broke the camel’s back apears to be the fact that West said on the Drinks Champs podcast, “I can say antisemitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what? Now what?”
Once he said that, even actress Kat Denning and comedian Chelsea Handler took to Twitter to question why Adidas was still supporting West.
Would any executives at @adidas like to comment on this? Or is their relationship with Kanye West and money more important? Asking as a Jewish woman.
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) October 24, 2022
https://twitter.com/OfficialKat/status/1584235920588349440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1584235920588349440%7Ctwgr%5E5d20929c61cf54572a19d714dea0f9836c7d2d3b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.entrepreneur.com%2Fbusiness-news%2Fadidas-drops-ye-what-companies-have-cut-ties-with-kanye%2F437844
Adidas pulled the plug in less than 48 hours.
Adidas has ended the relationship, but the brand is still being called out online for taking so long.
Some people are even speculating the brand only changed its mind when stocks dropped because of its association with West.
Adidas announced they would not be cutting ties with Kanye…until their stock dropped 17%. That helped them see the light.
— Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) October 25, 2022
Glad Adidas cut Kanye off today but if companies had started giving him the boot when he started doing all that anti-black shit, he never would have graduated to the antisemitism.
— I Smoked Steve Bannon (@BlackKnight10k) October 25, 2022
Adidas didn’t drop Kanye West to stand against anti-semitism.
They dropped him because their stock was falling hard and an analyst told them to in order to salvage their stock value they needed to drop him.
Nothing heroic about what they did.
— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) October 25, 2022
