Adidas has dropped Kanye West due to his recent provocative statements, making the firm the latest and maybe most major to break relations with the controversial artist.
The firm announced its intention to end its lucrative deal with Kanye with immediate effect on Tuesday (October 25), citing his anti-Semitic statements.
"Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism or any other sort of hate speech," according to the statement. "Ye's recent statements and actions are reprehensible, hateful, and dangerous, and they go against the company's principles of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and justice."
“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.”
It continued: “Adidas is the sole owner of all design rights to existing products as well as previous and new colorways under the partnership. More information will be given as part of the company’s upcoming Q3 earnings announcement on November 9, 2022.”
After cutting ties with Kanye West, the German firm expects to lose around $246 million in net income in 2022, according to Bloomberg, while its shares plunged as much as 4.5 percent on Tuesday morning, the lowest since 2016.
Adidas has become increasingly pressured by legal associations, anti-racism organizations, and even its own staff members to cut ties with Ye, who has made a variety of anti-Semitic statements on social media and in interviews, in furthermore to wearing a "White Lives Matter" shirt at Paris Fashion Week earlier this month.
Kanye boasted about being apparently undroppable by Adidas despite speaking "anti-Semitic stuff" during a recent visit to N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN's Drink Champs, which has since been removed.
Adidas is the newest major corporation to cut all ties with Kanye West following his recent provocations. Balenciaga, the French fashion brand that collaborated on his Yeezy Gap Engineered By Balenciaga collection, declared last week that it "has no longer any ties nor any intentions for future initiatives associated to this artist."
The renowned talent agency Creative Arts Agency has also dismissed Kanye from its client roster, while a finished documentary on the rap mogul has been shelved by film and television company MRC.
Furthermore, after more than a decade on the label, Ye's G.O.O.D. The music imprint is no longer under Def Jam, but it's unclear if the partnership was broken before or after its founder's anti-Semitic remarks.