Marketing fund “mismanaged”: Adidas is suing the US rapper for $75 million.
Adidas is currently in a legal battle with Kanye West. The sports brand accuses Ye of “mismanaging” the money from the marketing fund and is therefore suing him for a total of 75 million US dollars.
West is said not to have kept to contractual agreements
According to Business Insider, court documents show that Adidas paid Kanye West a $100 million marketing fund. From this, 75 million US dollars are said to have been paid into two Yeezy accounts. According to Adidas, “virtually all marketing money was mishandled” and spent for unauthorized purposes.
The signed contract between Adidas and Kanye West is said to state that the marketing funds must not be “mixed up” and that if the US rapper uses the money for “incorrect purposes”, he is obliged to pay it back to the sporting goods manufacturer. What exactly “reasonable purposes” might be can no longer be inferred from the contract, as these have been blacked out in the court file.
Marketing money spent on “Sunday Service”.
Back in 2020, the DONDA rapper admitted in an interview with Nick Cannon that he used around $50 million from the Yeezy marketing fund for “Sunday Service.” Among other things, he used the money to pay for his gospel choir tour and flights to Jamaica for a total of 120 people.
“The Yeezys sold themselves, so instead of paying for advertising, I put the money into the church.”
This isn’t the first time Adidas and Kanye West have faced each other in court. At the end of May, the sports brand wanted the sum in question to be frozen in the rapper’s account – in vain. However, according to reports from “Bloomberg”, US District Judge Valerie Caproni stated that a return of the funds to Adidas was likely.