adidas Chair & CEO Herbert Hainer said that the company “declined to renew its apparel deal” with EPL club Liverpool because “the price was too high given the 18-time English soccer champion’s poor performance,” according to Tariq Panja of BLOOMBERG NEWS. Hainer said, “The gap between their performance on the field and what the number should be is not in balance.” Liverpool has not won an EPL title since '90 and currently sits seventh in the EPL standings. The club last April announced it had signed a six-year deal worth US$38.3M annually with Warrior Sports, a subsidiary of New Balance. The deal, Warrior’s “first major soccer contract, begins next season and is worth almost double the current agreement with Adidas.” Panja reported the deal with Warrior “may benefit the team further because it allows Liverpool to retain control over all merchandise not related to the clothing the team wears, something that it had ceded to adidas.” Still, it will “no longer be able to rely on the company’s vast global supply chain” (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 1/16). The London TELEGRPAH reports Liverpool’s current deal with adidas “expires at the end of the season after talks over an extension collapsed last year.” It had been suggested that Liverpool “voluntarily ended the agreement with adidas after a dispute about control over merchandise not related to the team’s kit.” But adidas “dismissed that claim, insisting the club were demanding unrealistic levels of money for the success they were enjoying on the field” (London TELEGRAPH, 1/17). Meanwhile, Liverpool has announced a nine-year plan to renovate its current stadium instead of building a new venue.
