Adidas reaches settlement with Ye

Sportswear giant Adidas has reached an out-of-court settlement with former collaborator and rapper, Kanye West – known professionally as Ye. It brings to an end a long-winded legal battle between the duo, first launched shortly after the end of their past partnership, which came to an abrupt close in 2022.

Now, Adidas chief executive, Bjorn Gulden, confirmed that all legal proceedings between West and the company, involving multiple lawsuits, have come to an end. In a conference call attended and reported on by various media, Gulden said: “There isn’t any more open issues, and there is no… money going either way, and we both move on.”

While Gulden declined to give exact details on the settlement, he did state: “There were tensions on many issues. When you put the claims on the right side and you put the claims on the left side, both parties said we don’t need to fight any more and withdrew all the claims.”

Adidas had ended its partnership with West’s Yeezy brand after the rapper made a series of antisemitic and racist comments that brought major global scrutiny towards both West and those he continued to work with. Tension had already arisen in the months prior, however, after Ye took to social media to publicly criticise Adidas executives and their handling of the partnership.

The decision to cut ties with West was followed by a series of lawsuits from all sides. Shareholders of Adidas, for example, had turned to the courts in early 2023 with a lawsuit against the brand, claiming that it had failed to implement precautionary measures concerning the problematic behaviour of West. Later in July 2023, Adidas then brought forward a lawsuit against West himself, in which it alleged that the rapper had been misappropriating 75 million dollars of annual marketing funds, thus violating certain agreements.