There is trouble in Los Angeles A-lister-fitness-guru paradise.
Over the weekend, it emerged that David Beckham is suing Hollywood actor turned wellness mogul Mark Wahlberg after a brand deal turned sour, allegedly leaving Becks £8.5 million out of pocket.
The pair have been friends for almost 15 years, dating back to when the 48-year-old former footballer moved in down the road from the 52-year-old Ted actor in LA in 2007.
But no more, apparently.
Beckham has accused Wahlberg of having misled him during their business dealings, accusing his company of “fraudulent conduct”.
The case relates to the fitness company F45 Training, which Wahlberg part-owns. Beckham agreed to be the US firm’s global ambassador when he moved to LA, but has now alleged that he was misled into working with the company. According to documents seen by The Sun, Beckham’s company DB Ventures Ltd initially began litigation against F45 in October 2022, alongside Australian golfing legend Greg Norman, before a judge instructed the pair to bring their cases separately.
Beckham claims he lost more than £8.5 million when stocks he was promised were withheld until after share prices plummeted. Wahlberg and his co-defendants claim the allegations of “fraudulent conduct” are baseless and have asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
A separate case is also being brought against the actor’s investment firm, Mark Wahlberg Investment Group (MWIG), and F45’s founders Adam Gilchrist and Rob Deutsch.
A series of Instagram posts shared by the footballer to his millions of followers promoting F45 as part of the deal have also been deleted.
Here’s everything you need to know about Beckham and Wahlberg’s friendship, Wahlberg’s business ventures and his darker history of legal troubles.
Inside Beckham and Wahlberg’s 15-year friendship
While Beckham and Wahlberg have been friends for over a decade, their relationship didn’t get off to the best start. Beckham and Wahlberg became friends after the ex-Manchester United midfielder and his family relocated to LA in 2007, after he signed a deal to join Major League Soccer team LA Galaxy. He had moved in down the road from Wahlberg, who was not a fan of the sudden press presence in the area.
“Man, the Beckhams. It used to be so quiet on my road,” Wahlberg said in a 2009 interview with the Daily Mail. “Then David moves in with his family. Suddenly we’ve got paparazzi hanging out day and night. Now they’ll follow any car that drives down the road. I take strong exception to that kind of thing. When I take my kids to the park I don’t want strangers sticking their lenses into our faces.”
“I’m not telling Beckham to take his family home,” he continued. “I’m just not sure why he came to America in the first place. Man, we don’t want your soccer. There’s no way Americans are going to buy the idea of 90 minutes of running around without much happening. Thanks for trying guys, but we’ll stick to baseball and basketball.”
However the two apparently patched things up, and Wahlberg later shared that he wanted to make sure there was no animosity between him and Beckham. “He wanted me to email him about something – I don’t know if it was a film. I had said something, half joking, because his house is at the bottom of our hill and a lot of people hang around the area. So I said something like, ‘I don’t like him being here because of that,’” Wahlberg later told The Sun. “I met him and some of his sons and he seems like a nice guy … I wanted to make sure he hadn’t taken that [remark] personally.”
In August 2021, Beckham agreed to serve as fitness brand F45’s global ambassador, a company which Wahlberg own’s minority shares in. “I’ve been a fan of the F45 franchise and training model since being introduced by my friend, Mark Wahlberg,” he said during a press release at the time.
The following year, Beckham and Wahlberg took a group trip to Canada together. “Great few days in Muskoka with family and friends♥️ wow what a place and yes we laughed a lot & drank a little @markwahlberg @jamiejsalter @tie_domi THE BEST,” Beckham captioned an Instagram post.
Mark then replied: "What a place. What A time❤️😂."
Wahlburgers, the Barbados cricket team and a collab with P Diddy – Wahlberg’s eclectic business ventures
These days, Wahlberg is perhaps as well known for his myriad business ventures as he is for his acting (and brief rap) career.
It all began in 2014, when Wahlberg, along with his brothers Donnie and Paul opened fast food hamburger establishment Wahlburgers. It was Mark's idea to expand Paul's restaurant in Massachusetts into a full-fledged chain, with a reality TV show to promote it.
In 2017, Page Six reported that the two of the Wahlburgers locations in New York had run into trouble, with one of the joints in Coney Island closing down and the company running behind on rent payments. Wahlburgers said at the time:“Wahlburgers required its Coney Island restaurant to close due to a number of factors. The same franchise group was in the process of developing a space in Times Square. In both cases the franchisee was not operating in compliance with Wahlburgers business practices and brand standards.”
Wahlberg has also bought an equity interest of the Barbados Tridents cricket team, after was introduced to the game by Amjal Khan, a friend and the club’s chairman. "I am a huge cricket fan now,” Wahlberg said in a statement after the announcement. “I'm excited to be a part of the Limacol Caribbean Premier League because I know cricket is huge in the Caribbean and a rich part of the region's heritage."
After cutting his teeth in the business world in the fast food sphere, in 2015 Wahlberg pivoted to fitness. Collaborating with now-disgraced hip-hop mogul P Diddy and billionaire Ronald Burkle, he invested in Aquahydrate, a bottled water brand. The following year, he co-founded Performance Inspired, a sports nutrition company, with former GNC executive Tom Dowd.
Along with his producing partner and manager Stephen Levinson, Wahlberg also launched Ballers Report, an online platform (and spin-off of their HBO series Ballers) that features inspiring business, entertainment and sports articles, videos and podcasts.
In March 2019, Wahlberg bought a stake in the F45 fitness franchise. Four years later, he became the company’s chief brand officer. The company describes itself as offering “life-changing gym and functional team training”. It owns over 2,000 studios worldwide, including 1,000 in the US and 500 in Australia where it was founded in 2011 by Gilchrist and Deutsche Wahlberg was named as chief brand officer in 2022.
In August 2023, F45 Training Holdings announced it had delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after its share price fell by 75 per cent. According to Business Wire, F45 had received notice from the NYSE that it was not in compliance with its listing standards.
A litany of alleged racist hate crimes: Wahlberg’s past legal troubles
Wahlberg’s history with the law in his late teenage years was decidedly darker.
While living in Boston in the 1980s, Wahlberg was twice charged for race-related hate crimes, and ended up serving jail time for one of the attacks.
In 1986, a then 15-year-old Wahlberg and three friends were charged for chasing three black children and hurling rocks at them while yelling: “Kill the n*****s” until an ambulance driver intervened. The following day, Wahlberg targeted another group of predominantly black children aged around nine or 10 at the beach. He rallied other white men to join in racially harassing and throwing rocks at them.
Wahlberg was convicted of violating the civil rights of his victims. A civil rights injunction was issued against him and two of his friends, and the case was resolved the following month.
An apparently unrelated second incident occurred two years later in 1988, when Wahlberg attacked two Vietnamese men while high on the drug PCP. He called one man, Thanh Lam, a “Vietnam f***ing s***” and struck him unconscious with a five-foot wooden stick. Later that same day, he punched army veteran Johnny Trinh in the eye. Police reported that Wahlberg used racist language towards both men.
In this incident he was charged with attempted murder, but pleaded guilty to felony assault, claiming that he was intoxicated and denying racial motivation for the attacks.
However, due to his prior civil rights injunction prohibiting him from racially motivated violence, he was found in contempt of court and sentenced to a two-year prison term.
In 2014, Wahlberg attempted to seek pardon for the second attack and have it wiped from his criminal record. “I am deeply sorry for the actions that I took on the night of April 8, 1988, as well as for any lasting damage that I may have caused the victims,” Wahlberg wrote in his pardon application. “Since that time, I have dedicated myself to becoming a better person and citizen so that I can be a role model to my children and others.”
He later dropped this request. In 2016, Wahlberg said he had met with Trinh and apologized "for those horrific acts". Trinh then released a public statement forgiving Wahlberg.
In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, he opened up further, and claimed that he had “done the work” to make things right.
“I took it upon myself to own up to my mistakes and go against the grain and not be a part of the gang any more – to say that I was going to go and do my own thing,” he explained.
“[It] made it 10 times more difficult to walk from my home to the train station, to go to school, to go to work. But I also prided myself on doing the right thing and turning my life around … I would hope that people would be able to get a second chance in life.”
