In the midst of all the positive news for the UFL with players signing to the NFL, the league is dealing with a bit of troubling press. For the 2024 season, the league struck an $11M deal with the Army. Now, a recent report from Military.com shows that the UFL did not meet the Army’s expectations.
SCOOP: The Army’s troubled $11 million marketing deal with The Rock went bad, yielding no recruits — and the service is trying to get some of its money back https://t.co/nPHruioUmW
— Steve Beynon (@StevenBeynon) July 30, 2024
Originally, this deal was made with the UFL and the Army in order to assist their recruiting efforts. The Army was plastered all over UFL broadcasts this year. This included the “U.S. Army Command Center”, which was where Mike Pereira and Dean Blandino would review important plays during games. In addition, every game had multiple interviews with members of the Army. The UFL’s players uniforms also had a U.S. Army patch on them.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wearing a custom #UFL jacket with all of the team logos on the sleeves ahead of the Daytona 500.
Sign @TheRock Up!! pic.twitter.com/rELwyraDRN
— UFL Newsroom (@UFLNewsroom) February 19, 2024
According to Military.com’s article, this deal resulted in zero new recruits to the Army. Obviously, that alone is enough for the Army to have some “buyers remorse”.
That said, there’s another layer to the situation. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was “supposed to serve as a pseudo brand ambassador for the Army”, but did not hold up his side of the bargain. Army documents show that Johnson was supposed to make five posts promoting the army this season, given his tremendous amount of followers online. However, Dwayne only made two of the five posts. Each post was valued at $1 million.
Leadership.
Very cool and honored to announce our @TheUFL partnership with the @USArmy 🇺🇸Good to see my friends,
GENERAL Randy George
GENERAL James E. Rainey
COMMAND…