Adidas has reached an out-of-court settlement with Ye (formerly Kanye West), ending a rocky two-year period between the two that followed from the sportswear giant’s 2022 decision to terminate their long-running Yeezy partnership as a result of the “well-publicized racist, antisemitic, and other offensive public statements and conduct of Ye.” During adidas’ Q3 earnings call on Tuesday the company’s CEO Bjorn Gulden confirmed the settlement, saying, “Both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims. No one owes anybody anything anymore.”
During the call, Gulden said that “there are no open issues” between adidas and Ye’s company Yeezy, and noted that matters like out-of-court settlement are “not something you always talk about with the press.” When pressed for details about the resolution, including any monetary elements of the settlement, Gulden said that there is no number to report: “No, there isn’t any number, we have nothing outstanding to him, and he has nothing outstanding to us.” He further asserted, “There were many open issues between the companies, and the only thing that is news is that there are no claims anymore.” There is nothing else.”
Adidas declined to comment further, referring TFL to the Tuesday earnings call.
The out-of-court settlement brings an end to the company’s legal squabbles with Ye over the once-very-lucrative Yeezy deal. It comes almost exactly two years after adidas confirmed that it would terminate the partnership with Ye, with the German sportswear giant announcing in October 2022 that “after a thorough review,” it would made “terminate the partnership with Ye immediately, end production of Yeezy branded products and stop all payments to Ye and his companies.” In a statement at the time, adidas confirmed that it would put an end to the Yeezy venture with “immediate effect,” noting that it “does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech,” and that Ye’s “comments and actions have been unacceptable, hateful, and dangerous, and they violate the company’s values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and fairness.”
Though adidas legal scuffle with Ye may be over, the company is still grappling with an ongoing investor lawsuit related to the matter. In a stock-drop lawsuit that was filed in 2023, adidas shareholder HRSA-ILA Funds accused adidas AG, its CFO Harm Ohlmeyer, and former CEO Kasper Rorsted of allegedly making “materially false and/or misleading” statements in connection with the Yeezy partnership that it entered into with Ye. That case was dismissed in August, but the plaintiffs filed notice last week with a federal court in Oregon that they planned to appeal the dismissal.
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