Adidas terminates Yeezy partnership over Kanye West's antisemitic comments

Why it matters

October 25, 2022. Adidas terminated the seven-year Yeezy partnership, citing Kanye West's escalating antisemitic public statements through September and October 2022. The escalating sequence included an October 8 tweet threatening "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE," multiple subsequent interviews repeating and expanding the rhetoric, and a series of public-relations crises that Adidas executives later said had made the relationship commercially untenable. The termination was estimated to cost Adidas up to €250 million in 2022 operating profit alone. Gap also terminated its Yeezy collaboration. Balenciaga severed ties. Vogue dropped him from its mastheads. JPMorgan Chase closed his accounts. The CAA talent agency dropped him. Forbes stripped him of his billionaire status. The cumulative cascade was one of the most rapid and complete commercial-isolation arcs ever experienced by a major popular-music figure, and it ended the most successful musician-and-fashion business of the 2010s. The Yeezy partnership had been generating $1.7 billion in annual revenue at its peak. The termination was the moment commercial culture finally enforced a line on Kanye's behavior. You can argue the line should have been enforced earlier. The argument is correct.