Ryan Lochte is filing suit against a headache medication company for backing out on a sponsorship deal worth $125,000, according to the New York Post.
The Post report says Lochte is suing Migralex – a pain-relief medication marketed specifically to combat headaches – after the company reneged on an endorsement deal he signed last fall.
Lochte famously lost his longtime sponsorship deal with swimwear giant Speedo back in August of 2016. That was part of the fallout for the the incident involving Lochte and three other American Olympic swimmers at a gas station bathroom in Rio after the swimming portion of the Olympics wrapped up. Lochte at one point claimed the group was robbed at gunpoint at the gas station, though later reports suggested the group caused damage to the gas station bathroom and were asked to pay to cover those damages. Brazil’s government pushed to have Lochte tried for falsely alleging a crime, and the story stole national media headlines for weeks. Over the next month or so, Lochte lost a number of key sponsorships, including Ralph Lauren and Syneron-Candela.
What makes the Migralex deal especially interesting is that the company actually signed the deal with Lochte on September 27, 2016, according to The Post. That was well after the Rio incident and at least two weeks after USA Swimming announced that Lochte would be suspended from competition for 10 months.
Migralex’s parent company, Ember Therapeutics, never made their payments to Lochte, the Post reports. Lochte brought the matter to an arbiter, and the arbiter supported his side, awarding Lochte $125,000 plus fees as of April 5th.
And even later, supposedly more accurate and less corrupt reports point out that the bathroom was locked and not destroyed, but rather old and poorly maintained. He pulled a laminated sign off a wall while drunk. I’m sure everybody here who has drank has done worse…myself included.
Sounds like someone thought they would his “negative publicity” to their advantage, and try and get him while he was down. Obviously if they signed a month after Rio, they had a full awareness of what they were getting in bed with.
Go get your paper Lochte. You have a baby on the way. ?
So he already won right? Cause at the end of this article it says the arbiter awarded him 125,000
Nope. Now he has to collect.
Check the first paragraph of the story. You meant $125,000 and not $125, right?
Lawsuits like this are such headaches! 😉
As are toxic brand ambassadors.
Did he ever get paid back after he won the lawsuit?