Following Adidas’ decision to sever all ties with its erstwhile figurehead Kanye West in October last year, the German sportswear brand has now claimed that the recording artist ‘mishandled’ US$75 million.
The money in question was allocated by Adidas for the Yeezy brand’s marketing expenditure and the pair are now locked in a legal battle over the supposedly misappropriated funds, in relation to a yearly marketing fund worth $100 million a year.
According to Bloomberg, Adidas now wants West to give back the $75 million, which it says it paid into two separate Yeezy bank accounts.
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The brand alleges that West and his companies “mishandled virtually all of the marketing funds” by neglecting to keep them separate and by spending the money inappropriately and in an unauthorised manner.
The artist had previously admitted to using $50 million of the money on his gospel choir tour ‘Sunday Service’, telling Nick Cannon’s podcast in 2020 that the Yeezys “were selling themselves,” before adding: “so instead of paying for ads, I invested it in the church.”
Full session with Kanye West is available now at https://t.co/kaVwamnqAk #cannonsclass pic.twitter.com/06gZiOaRhK
— Nick Cannon (@NickCannon) September 1, 2020
In the wake of the partnership’s collapse, Adidas said that it was left with $1.3 billion-worth of Yeezy stock and that it would donate the profits made from their sale to organisations working with people who “were hurt” by West’s anti-semitic comments.
