Eleven disabled athletes appeared in the original campaign. Only one became the story once it left the store shelf for social media, and adidas’s attempt to separate local execution from global accountability is now the harder problem.

adidas is facing boycott calls after an in-store campaign for its Single Shoe service, which lets amputee customers buy one shoe rather than a full pair at half the pair price. The campaign, photographed at stores in Israel, featured former Israeli soldier Shalev Biton among 11 disabled athletes of various nationalities. Biton has said publicly that the service mattered to him because he had repeatedly been forced to buy a full pair of shoes despite needing only one. 

Biton lost his left leg in May 2021 when an anti-tank missile struck a military vehicle near the Gaza border during a round of fighting the Israeli army calls Operation Guardian of the Walls, according to the Times of Israel.

He has since returned to running with a prosthetic. Israel Hayom and Ynet argued that social-media criticism focused on Biton individually while omitting the broader accessibility program and the participation of the other 10 athletes, and reported that posts recasting him as the campaign’s central figure generated millions of views and drove the #BoycottAdidas hashtag.

Critics, including Spanish actor Javier Bardem and Palestinian boycott campaigner Stephanie Westbrook, contrasted the campaign with World Health Organization estimates that more than 5,000 traumatic limb amputations have occurred in Gaza since October 2023.

Adidas responded with a statement from its global headquarters describing the posters as “a local activation by the local team,” apologizing for any offense while stressing that the Single Shoe program, launched across 23 European countries in January 2026 with the British Paralympic Association, has since expanded into the UAE, Palestine, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Egypt.

The response highlighted a challenge increasingly faced by global sports brands.

Adidas presented the posters as a “local activation” while also stressing that the Single Shoe program operates across multiple Middle Eastern markets. Many companies lean on this familiar playbook: shift accountability to local teams to distance headquarters from responsibility, while trying to placate boycotters to protect the business. But this kind of crisis communication can backfire into another form of discrimination: of 11 amputated athletes, one seems not to have the right to be portrayed.

Biton said his personal social media account came under a coordinated attack after the backlash.

For multinational sporting goods brands running inclusion or accessibility campaigns through local teams in politically sensitive markets, the case is less a lesson about casting than about who controls the narrative once a local activation stops being local.

It also raises the question of who bears responsibility for the harm done to the testimonial, left to face the consequences of a brand choice the brand appears unwilling to stand by.

 

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