Despite being disbanded in 2023, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has reemerged to file a $150 million lawsuit against media mogul Jay Penske, Penske Media Corporation, the Golden Globe Foundation, and Golden Globe Foundation CEO Gregory Goeckner, claiming that these groups and individuals engaged in a scheme to devalue the Golden Globes.
The HFPA is alleging officials at the Golden Globes engaged in a year’s-long effort to devalue the awards so that they can be sold to Penske to create an “awards-industrial complex” to enrich and empower the media giant, according to The Wrap.
“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,” the lawsuit states.
The organization claims that Penske now has too much influence over the Hollywood award milieu and alleges that his ownership of many of Hollywood’s biggest media organizations — such as The Hollywood Reporter and Variety — gives Penske far too much power to affect the awards and shape them to his desires.
The HFPA itself was disbanded due to a series of scandals, including financial improprieties, as well as the general disgust among Hollywood’s power brokers that HFPA didn’t have a single black member.
The Golden Globe assets were purchased by Eldridge Industries in 2023, which continued to run the awards along with Dick Clark Productions — the latter of which is co-owned by Eldridge and Penske Media.
Now, the HFPA is attempting a comeback and alleging that Penske and Boehly orchestrated a 2021 boycott of the Golden Globes and used Penske’s media outlets to advertise the move to denigrate the awards. The lawsuit is also claiming that Penske and Boehly manipulated the sale of the Golden Globes to benefit Penske control of the Hollywood media and awards markets. And that Gregory Goeckner illegally transferred $4 million on HFPA funds to the Golden Globe Foundation so the money would be in Penske’s control.
“The defendants’ alleged anticompetitive conduct and brazen attempts to destroy the Hollywood Foreign Press Association … has caused great harm to the 83-year-old organization and to the integrity of the awards market and related markets in the entertainment industry,” said Daniel A. Saunders, counsel for the HFPA.
The Golden Globes denied all the charges in the lawsuit, calling the accusations “unequivocally false.”
“This latest act of duplicity is a new low, even for the HFPA,” a Globes spokesperson said. “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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