David Beckham filed a lawsuit against Mark Wahlberg's F45 Training fitness company in 2022 over a breach of contract.
David Beckham and Mark Wahlberg's F45 Training have resolved their legal dispute in a deal that will see the soccer icon stay on as a brand ambassador for the fitness company.
According to a release from F45 Training Holdings Inc., F45 Training's parent company reached an agreement to resolve a prior lawsuit brought forward by DB Ventures Limited, which concerned an ambassador agreement for Beckham. As part of the agreement, DB Ventures Limited will drop the lawsuit against F45 Training and Beckham will stay on as an investor.
"We are pleased to have settled this issue and to retain our investment in F45, and wish the team all the best for the future," said Dan Dienst, Executive Vice Chairman of Authentic Brands Group, which has a controlling stake in Beckham's management business that handles his endorsements.
It was back in October 2022 when Beckham's business management company sued Wahlberg's F45 Training for breach of contract and sought more than $10 million in damages after claiming "fraudulent inducement, according to court documents obtained by ET.
In the 84-page lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, DB Ventures Limited claimed Beckham signed on as an ambassador in 2020 to help grow the brand and enhance the company's public profile and credibility by marketing and promoting the fitness company -- from posting photos while at the gym to his more than 70 million followers to public and private appearances at the studios.
"In part due to these efforts, F45 went public in 2021 with a valuation nearly three times higher than it had two years earlier," the court documents state.
But despite Beckham holding his end of the bargain, the lawsuit states "F45 failed to issue substantial cash and equity compensation to Plaintiffs as required by the parties' agreements." The lawsuit states that "as F45's business began to falter in 2022 due to fiscal mismanagement and macroeconomic pressures, F45 withheld millions of dollars in contractually obligated considerations" from Beckham's business management company and "rebuffed multiple letters" from DB Ventures Limited "to allow F45 to cure its breaches."
In short, Beckham's company claims it got duped by F45 "to remain invested in a rapidly declining asset with no recourse, and by the time F45 belatedly registered those shares and rendered them capable of liquidation in September 2022, they were worth over $9.3 million less than the date on which they were contractually required to have been properly conveyed to DBVL."
In an odd twist, the case was last seen by a judge in September 2023. It's unclear why the case sat dormant until now, when the parties reached a resolution.
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