Skechers Is Suing Adidas For Using Illegal Means To Maintain The Upper Hand Amongst Athletes5/10/2018 CJ- The shoe company Skechers is suing Adidas, claiming it was at an unfair disadvantage as a result of the alleged schemes involving the University of Louisville and other colleges that have been revealed during the FBI's investigation into college basketball.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in California, argued that "illicit payments denied competitors like Skechers who play by the rules a fair opportunity to compete for the cachet of having trend-setting high-school and college athletes seen in their products." Skechers claimed it "has been harmed due to increased advertising and marketing costs and lost sales, market share and goodwill" as a result of Adidas' actions. "Skechers and other competitors' basketball businesses cannot effectively compete for players' footwear choices while they are amateurs — or for their endorsements when they turn professional — because Adidas has sought to 'lock up' players by paying secret, illegal bribes to them and/or their families," the lawsuit said. -------- I'm going to temporarily look past the fact that this lawsuit is so far beyond frivolous that, if possible, the word 'frivolous' would sue me for mildly associating it with this story. I know everyone's initial reaction to reading that Skechers "thinks" that a couple illicit payments are all that stands between them and popularity amongst young, (predominantly) black men is one that likely resembles the face their customers might make when you use the words 'rap' and 'music' in the same sentence. However, what's far funnier than a company known for their glorified orthopedic shoes presumably keeping a straight face while putting their perfectly supported foot down against the monetization of "amateur" athletics is the idea that a company that's more white and aged-out than racist rhetoric is trying to sue their way into the culture. The mental image of a bunch of swagless, middle-aged white men sitting down and brainstorming ways in which to also profit off the largely urban community and settling on the legal system is so appropriately fitting that it might as well be used in the advertisement for their 2019 line. Skechers thought the best way to expand their reach to a more diverse demographic wasn't to pay out the ass for a member of said demographic to publicly represent their product as their competition has done, but rather to prosecute their competition for already having said reach. For what that lacks in sense, it easily makes up for in reinforcing a stereotype more strongly than the popularity of pumpkin as a flavor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|