David Beckham is set to sue a fitness training company, F45 Training, co-owned by actor Mark Wahlberg, for allegedly failing to meet contractual obligations promptly.
Beckham is suing Wahlberg’s company for their failure to pay him stock for marketing and social media posts, which resulted in the former Manchester United man losing out on €14 million.
David Beckham has shared that he agreed to become a “global ambassador” for the fitness company F45 Training in November 2020.
The deal included him posting promotional content on his Instagram account in exchange for tradable shares in the company when it went public in July 2021.
David Beckham’s grievance with the company
Based on the content of Beckham’s lawsuit, F45 was required to compensate the Inter Miami co-owner with shares in the company within six months of its initial public offering in January 2022.
However, the fitness training company delayed handing the shares over to David Beckham for several months.
Moreover, F45’s stock price declined massively after February 2022, causing the value of Beckham’s potential shares to lose about $9.3 million by the time he was finally handed them.
David Beckham’s attorneys also allege F45 objected to not awarding another $5 million in shares they were contractually required to pay the Englishman in July 2022.
Meanwhile, F45 legal representatives deny both claims, expressing that the company issued Beckham the shares owed him at the appropriate time.
They claim that Beckham’s company is “attempting to benefit from its own wrongdoing and has unclean hands.”
The company of David Beckham initially teamed up with Australian retired golfer Greg Norman to sue the fitness company
DB Ventures Limited, a company owned by David Beckham, first teamed up with Australian golfer Greg Norman in October 2022 to file a civil suit against F45, Wahlberg, and several of the gym’s co-founders.
However, a judge ordered the two celebrities to file their cases separately and independently, resulting in Beckham filing a new complaint in May 2023.
In September 2023, California-based federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong denied a previous motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought by F45’s lawyers.
The judge found that Beckham fulfilled his obligations to F45, but the fitness company did not meet their end of the bargain, as they did not make the “issued shares freely transferable or tradeable.”
It is uncertain whether the suit will be dismissed or eventually proceed to trial, with the judge handling the case issuing an order for a civil trial in November 2023.
However, no trial date has been stipulated, and it is unknown when a future trial will be scheduled, or if David Beckham and F45 will settle out of court.
Brief history on F45 Training company
F45 Training was founded by Adam Gilchrist and Rob Deutsche in Sydney, Australia in 2011.
They quickly sprawled massively with hundreds of franchises in the U.S.A., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
F45’s locations offer what it terms as “high-intensity functional group workouts.”
In 2019, Mark Wahlberg acquired a minority stake in the company in a deal financed by his Mark Wahlberg Investment Group and FOD Capital, according to reports from Bloomberg.
The company was also valued at $450 million, with F45 going public in July 2021, and it subsequently began trading on the New York Stock Exchange at $16.10 per share.
The stock price declined in 2022, and has never fully recovered, with the company delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in August 2023.
It has since then been trading below $1 per share and was last valued at approximately 15 cents per share, valuing the fitness company at an estimated $14.63 million – a similar amount to what Beckham claims he is owed.
