Adidas says it has reached an amicable agreement with rapper Kanye West to end all legal proceedings between them, without any money being exchanged.
The German sportswear giant had been locked in a dispute with the artist, who now goes by the name Ye, since they cut ties in 2022 after allegations of antisemitism against him.
“There [aren’t] any more open issues and there is no … money going either way,” the Adidas chief executive, Bjorn Gulden, told reporters on a conference call on Tuesday, without giving any details of the agreement.
“There were tensions on many issues [but] ... both parties said we don’t need to fight any more.”
The drama with West “belongs to the past”, he added.
“When you have conflicts like this, you take provisions and you have legal opinions and there are negotiations and there are settlements being done, and this is the end to it.
“No one owes anything to anybody any more. Whatever was is history.”
Adidas and West launched a business deal in 2014 after the rapper ended his affiliation with Nike.
The partnership was one of the most successful sportswear tie-ups in history and the resulting Yeezy range went on to help make West a billionaire.
But when West made a series of antisemitic comments on social media in October 2022, Adidas announced it was ending the partnership, calling his remarks “unacceptable, hateful and dangerous”, adding that it would “not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech”.
West went on to repeat many of his claims in multiple interviews, and later said his wealth crashed by $2bn in a single day as a consequence as different companies dropped him.
Gulden defended West a year later, saying that the rapper’s comments were “very unfortunate, because I don’t think he meant what he said and I don’t think he’s a bad person – it just came across that way”.
“That meant we lost that business. One of the most successful collabs in history – very sad,” he told the podcast In Good Company. “But again, when you work with third parties, that could happen. It’s part of the game. That can happen with an athlete, it can happen with an entertainer. It’s part of the business.”
Ending the partnership in 2022 left Adidas with unwanted Yeezy stock worth some €1.2bn including shoes and other goods.
Adidas has been selling its huge inventory of Yeezy products in batches and donating the proceeds to NGOs, including a foundation launched by the company itself in March to support anti-discrimination initiatives.
The remaining Yeezy stocks will be sold by the end of 2024, the company said.
Gulden addressed the drama with West as he presented the company’s third-quarter results, already made public earlier in October.
Between July and September, Adidas sales totalled €6.4bn (US$7bn), a 7% increase on the same period last year.
Adidas said it had increased its financial guidance for the year “to reflect the better-than-expected performance during the quarter and the current brand momentum”.
Gulden said the company had managed to boost its sales with other lucrative shoe collections, such as the Samba, Gazelle and Campus ranges.
Agence-France Press contributed to this report
