Please use the adidas clearance sale sharing tools found via the email icon at the top of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT. com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft. com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at James Gatto, described by prosecutors as the global marketing director of basketball at Adidas, was among the defendants named in a four-count complaint by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Prosecutors accused Mr Gatto of conspiring with coaches to make bribe payments to student athletes and their families, in exchange for commitments by those players to attend universities sponsored by Adidas, and to sign with Adidas upon joining a professional basketball league.
Adidas on Tuesday said that adidas zx uk sale one of its employees had been arrested by federal investigators. A representative from the Department of Justice could not confirm how many of the defendants had been arrested. Since 2015 the FBI and US attorney’s office have been investigating “the criminal influence of money on coaches and athletes who participate in” National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball, the complaint said. An Adidas executive was arrested on charges that he bribed high-school athletes to play at universities sponsored by the sportswear company. The Department of Justice announced Tuesday that Jim Gatto, director of global sports marketing for basketball at Adidas, had been arrested along with nine college assistant coaches, managers, and financial advisers.
The investigation, which had been in progress cheap adidas hamburg mens since 2015, was led by the FBI and the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. In one of three complaints filed, Gatto and four other defendants have been charged with "making and concealing bribe payments" to high-school student athletes and/or their families. Two other defendants are also linked to Adidas — Merl Code, a business affiliate of Adidas, and Jonathan Brad Augustine, the program director of an Adidas-sponsored teen basketball team. Certainly this news will rock NCAA college basketball to its core. Many are identifying it as a validation of what people have suspected for years: that behind closed doors, high profile high school athletes are given money or other gifts to lure them to commit to a certain school.
But this scandal is also particularly debilitating for Adidas. It comes at a time when the brand is flying, and actively focusing on signing more big universities to long-term sponsorship deals. The German sportswear giant is on an incredible hot streak in America right now, at last, after seeing its footwear and apparel market share decline in the States for five years straight, up until 2015. Just this month, Adidas achieved a new milestone in sneakers: it regained the No. 2 spot in the US athletic footwear market, by share of dollars spent, over Nike-owned Jordan Brand. It marked a stunning comeback. The University of Louisville is not named in the complaint, but the language mentions a student who allegedly received $100, 000 to attend a school in Kentucky. The enrollment numbers referenced match up. This year, Louisville signed a 10-year, $160 million extension adidas superstar womens size 6 contract with Adidas.