Liverpool’s performance didn’t warrant new deal, slams Adidas CEO.

Liverpool FC lost their lucrative partnership with Adidas after pricing themselves out of a new kit 

deal, according to the sports brand’s chief executive Herbert Hainer. The Premier League club’s current deal with Adidas, the world’s second biggest sporting goods manufacturer, expires at the end of the year after talks over an extension broke down last year.

Instead, Liverpool are understood to have secured £25m agreement with American brand, Warrior Sports, last April. Trumping Manchester United’s contract with Nike, which pays a £12m annual retainer for the rights, the new deal doubles the Merseyside team’s current income from its kit deal.It had been suggested that Liverpool had voluntarily ended the current agreement with the German brand following disputes about control over merchandise related to the team’s kit.

However, Adidas claimed that the truth was that Liverpool demanded too much money in comparison to the team’s on-field performance. “The gap between their performance on the field and what the number should be is not in balance,” Herbert Hainer, Adidas’s chief executive officer, told Bloomberg News."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."  

The Red’s MD, Ian Ayre expressed the club’s dismay following Hainer’s comments in an interview with the Liverpool Echo. “We are disappointed that Adidas seem to point to a lack of European football as reason not to agree a new deal and cannot see that we are on par with the biggest football brands in the world.” The commercial partnership between club and brand started in the 1985 to 86 season, and following a 10-year deal with Reebok, was revived in 2006, after the club won the Champions League.

Global sales of Liverpool FC replica shirts are believed to be almost 900,000 a year, making it the fourth highest selling kit in the world, behind United, Barcelona and Real Madrid.Warrior Sports’ parent company New Balance, was appointed the kit supplier to the Boston Red Sox last April, the baseball team owned by the Fenway Sports Group – the same conglomerate now in charge at Anfield.

By Seb Joseph