Army, UFL Say $11 Million Marketing Saga With The Rock Is Resolved

The eight-figure wrangling between the U.S. Army, the United Football League, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson has come to an end.

In July, Military.com reported on internal military documents that showed the Army wanted $6 million back from an $11 million failed marketing deal with the UFL and its co-owner Johnson. According to the documents, Johnson published only two of the five social media posts agreed upon in the deal, each valued at $1 million. The deal mainly consisted of Army promotions like uniform logos on game days.

In early January, UFL president Russ Brandon gave an update on the situation in an interview with Front Office Sports.

“We have great relationships still with the Army, you know, General George and Colonel Butler and that whole team,” Brandon said. “I think we worked through all that and I think we’re all in a good place.”

Asked whether the situation was “settled,” Brandon answered, “Yes.”

Army marketing spokesperson Laura DeFrancisco agreed with Brandon’s assessment, denying any kind of “dispute” between the Army and UFL, though she said the Army does not plan on any marketing deal with the league this year.

“The Army was not ever trying to get money back from the UFL,” she told FOS. “This was a contract—an entity is paid for services rendered upon completion of a contract, not before.”

In the summer, Military.com reported that the Army wanted to recover $6 million from the football league, and DeFrancisco told the outlet that the Army had been “in the process of working with the UFL to determine the final cost.”

This week, she told FOS that dollar figures were not discussed between the two sides during contract renegotiations, which is when the news originally broke. (DDB, an ad agency owned by marketing conglomerate Omnicom, handles marketing for the Army, so the contract was between DDB and the UFL but overseen by the government office, DeFrancisco says.)

The two sides came to an agreement that gave the Army a fair market value for what the UFL had done to promote them, says DeFrancisco, who insists the partnership did not have a negative impact on recruiting. Military.com had reported an internal review of the marketing deal showed the Army projected a loss of 38 enlistments.

“In terms of The Rock, it’s unfortunate he was pulled away at a time when we expected him to be present with us to create content for his social media channels,” a spokesperson for Gen. George, Col. Dave Butler, said in a statement to Military.com this summer. “But we’re working with the UFL to rebalance the contract. The Rock remains a good partner to the Army.”

The UFL, a merger between the XFL and USFL, begins its second regular season March 28 on Fox Sports. The network owns half of the league, while the other half is shared by Johnson, his former wife and business partner Dany Garcia, and RedBird Capital Partners. Those three bought the XFL for $15 million in August 2020 after the league had filed for bankruptcy a few months earlier. 

Editors’ note: RedBird IMI, of which RedBird Capital Partners is a joint venture, is the majority owner of Front Office Sports.