Numlock Sunday: Kim Bhasin on the year celebrities became influencers

Photo by Kyle Brinker on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to my friend Kim Bhasin, who writes about business deals of celebrities for Bloomberg. Here's what I wrote about one of his best from the year:

Adidas is sitting on a mountain of shoes produced in partnership with Ye, who was previously known as Kanye West. The company cut ties with the artist over a series of meandering, antisemitic tirades over the course of last year, and as a result Adidas is sitting on $1.3 billion worth of Yeezy merch. The plan is to sell them, and will be donating some proceeds to the Anti-Defamation League. The problem, though, is that it was just revealed that selling them will still mean they owe Ye a bunch of money in royalties, specifically about 11 percent of every single sale, which means Kanye's still looking at $150 million from Adidas if they manage to unload the stock.

This was a big year in this space. It saw the continued evolution of what it means…