Liverpool lost their lucrative partnership with Adidas after demanding too much money for their on-field performance, according to the firm’s chief executive.
The Premier League club’s current deal with Adidas, the world’s second biggest sporting goods manufacturer, expires at the end of the season after talks over an extension collapsed last year.
Instead, Liverpool signed a club-record £25 million contract with Boston-based Warrior Sports which will last six years. The deal, which is Warrior’s first major contract in football, is worth almost double the agreement with Adidas.
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 on Monday night, the American firm dismissed that claim, insisting the club were demanding unrealistic levels of money for the success they were enjoying on the field.
“The gap between their performance on the field and what the number should be is not in balance,” said Herbert Hainer, Adidas’s chief executive officer.
“Then we said, ‘OK we will not do it’. That’s the end of the story. It all depends on the success and the effort and the popularity, the exposure on TV, revenue you can generate by merchandising,
“This all has to be brought in line between what you offer and what you get. We thought that what Liverpool were asking and what they were delivering was not in the right balance.”
Liverpool’s lack of success on the field may have deterred Adidas, but the Merseyside club has recently enjoyed a lucrative run of new financial agreements with their commercial partners.
London-based bank Standard Chartered has agreed to pay a record £81.5 million to have its logo displayed on the team’s shirts for four years and the club’s sales department has also signed new sponsors such as Turkish tourism.
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