Penske Media Sued by Hollywood Foreign Press Association Over Golden Globes Buy

Logo text The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has sued Penske Media, parent of The Hollywood Reporter , Variety , Rolling Stone and other publications, alleging the company fraudulently acquired the Golden Globes as part of a larger plan to monopolize the awards market.

In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in California federal court, the HFPA accuses Penske Media of leveraging its control over the Hollywood trades to instigate a boycott of the group with the goal of rendering it vulnerable to an acquisition. The organization brings claims for monopolization, unjust enrichment and fraudulent misrepresentation, among several others, and seeks at least $150 million, plus a court order undoing the acquisition of the Golden Globes' assets, rights and properties.

"This case arises from a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the prestigious and valuable 80-year-old Golden Globe Awards, destroy their founder and former owner, the HFPA, and exert monopolistic control over the Hollywood trades, awards, and advertising markets," states the complaint.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Golden Globes said the lawsuit "continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA."

"The Golden Globes transaction closed more than three years ago and received all required approvals—any assertion that it did not close, or remains subject to reversal, is once again unequivocally false," the spokesperson added. "This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA. The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes."

In 2023, Dick Clark Productions — a large producer of televised live event entertainment programming, which shares the same ownership as THR — and Eldridge bought the Golden Globes from the HFPA, the organization of non-American journalists that founded the awards show in 1943.

The lawsuit accuses Penske of orchestrating a media campaign that criticized the HFPA for lacking diversity, leading to an industry-wide boycott that resulted in major players across Hollywood refusing to broadcast or participate in the Golden Globes ceremony in 2022. (A publicity firm backlash against the Globes began in February 2021 after The Los Angeles Times published an article titled, "Who really gives out the Golden Globes? A tiny group full of quirky characters — and no Black members.")

Within months of the alleged boycott, Eldridge chairman Todd Boehly became interim CEO of the HFPA and worked alongside then-president Helen Hoehne, now president of the for-profit enterprise, to fast-track an acquisition, according to the complaint. The group claims that they facilitated a "conflicted and corrupt" negotiation for the transaction, pointing to Boehly sitting on both sides of the deal.

The lawsuit also alleges that the terms of the transaction were changed after it closed to greenlight a $27.5 million gift from the HFPA — all the profits from the 2023 Golden Globes — to Eldridge. The amendment to the acquisition, the lawsuit claims, wasn't properly presented to board members and never ratified by the group's members.

Shortly after, Boehly announced that he was partnering with Penske Media owner Jay Penske in the deal.

The purchase positioned Penske to "control the entertainment news disseminated to the general public, while maintaining a monopoly over streams of advertising revenue in the market," writes Daniel Saunders of Kasowitz in the complaint. Marc Kasowitz, founder of the firm, is a longtime personal legal advisor for President Trump.

Last February, Hoehne held a meeting with about 50 voters that had been members of the HFPA and had signed contracts with its new corporate owners in June 2023 that entitled them to a base salary of $75,000 annually in a five-year deal. The purpose of the meeting was to be offered severance of $102,500 as the Globes phased out its model of paying its awards voters.

Penske owns at least half a dozen major awards shows, a majority of the Hollywood trade publications that sell advertising for awards contenders, the digital media platform that specializes in awards predictions (Gold Derby Media) and the company that measures statistics for awards eligibility (Luminate).

Read the Golden Globes' full statement below:

"Today's lawsuit continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA. The Golden Globes transaction closed more than three years ago and received all required approvals — any assertion that it did not close, or remains subject to reversal, is once again unequivocally false. This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA. The attempt by former HFPA members to leverage the Golden Globe Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globes tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes. We remain troubled that the HFPA, an organization so widely criticized for ethical failures, non-inclusivity, racism, and misconduct involving talent, continues to find attorneys willing to push such illegitimate claims."

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