👟 Adidas ended its Ye deal, warning of a €250M hit

The filing, to be precise, is a press release. On October 25, 2022, Adidas announced that it was terminating its partnership with Ye "immediately," ending production of Yeezy products and stopping "all payments to Ye and his companies." The company said the move was expected to cost it up to €250 million in net income for 2022.

The stated reason was not commercial. Adidas said Ye's "recent comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful and dangerous," and that they violate the company's values. NPR reported that Adidas had begun "reviewing" the partnership earlier that month, after Ye wore a "White Lives Matter" shirt at Paris Fashion Week. NPR also reported that Ye had not responded to the Adidas breakup when it published.

The numbers on record

The Guardian, citing Bloomberg, reported that the partnership brought in nearly $1.7bn in revenue for Adidas in 2020 and was due to expire in 2026. That is a company's revenue, not Ye's pay: the contract's terms are not in the documents Mr Scandal has read. What Adidas did state is that it owns all design rights to existing products and to previous and new colorways under the partnership.

The deal had been renewed in public before. In June 2016, Hotnewhiphop reported that Adidas had announced a long-term contract extension with Ye that would take Yeezy into sports performance products. The partnership itself was confirmed by Adidas to the Wall Street Journal in December 2013, when a spokesperson welcomed Ye "to the adidas family" for 2014.

What Ye's side has said

Forbes estimated that Ye lost around $400 million in net worth after the termination, and valued the Adidas deal as adding $1.5 billion to his net worth, Digital Music News reported. The Guardian reported that Forbes put him at $400m, down from $2bn earlier that year, and that Ye has claimed the Adidas deal was worth more than $4bn and that Forbes' calculations were wrong.

In February 2024, Ye told TMZ: "I was two months from going bankrupt, really… And we survived," NME reported. He also said he had sent the company an apology, and that Adidas "still fuck with me." Adidas has not been quoted in the documents read as responding to that claim.

The Guardian noted, as did analysts it cited, that the statement on design rights suggested Adidas might relaunch popular Yeezy products under a different name. Whether that replaced the lost profits was, the Guardian said, not clear.

Adidas, for its part, moved on. Its 2024 annual report shows net sales of €23,683 million and an operating profit of €1,337 million for the year, against an operating profit of €268 million in 2023. The report does not, in the pages read, break out Yeezy.