The Hollywood Foreign Press Association may have been effectively declared dead three years ago, but the organization that once ran the Golden Globes is back—and it is going directly after one of the most powerful media empires in Hollywood.
The HFPA filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Tuesday against Jay Penske, Penske Media Corporation, the Golden Globe Foundation, and its CEO Gregory Goeckner, seeking more than $150 million in damages over what the complaint describes as a “corrupt scheme to fraudulently acquire the Golden Globe Awards” while establishing monopolistic control over Hollywood trade publications, entertainment awards, and the lucrative For Your Consideration advertising business. The suit, filed in the Central District of California by Kasowitz LLP, includes 20 causes of action and also seeks treble damages, injunctive relief, disgorgement, and potentially the rescission of agreements connected to the sale.
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That the HFPA still exists to bring the lawsuit requires some explanation. In June 2023, Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries acquired the Golden Globes’ assets, rights, and properties in a transaction that called for the HFPA and its membership to wind down, while its charitable activities transitioned to the new Golden Globe Foundation. The Globes themselves became a commercial enterprise controlled by DCP. How the HFPA reached that point—and whether Penske and Boehly helped engineer its demise—is now central to the lawsuit.
Concerns about the arrangement’s potential conflicts were raised at the time. TheWrap noted in 2023 that Eldridge’s partnership with Penske meant several major Hollywood trade publications shared an economic interest in the Golden Globes, with one journalist at a Penske-owned publication telling the outlet, “I believe in church and state. And the church just moved into the building.”
But perhaps the most incendiary part of the lawsuit goes well beyond the tortured history of the HFPA and the Golden Globes.
The complaint takes direct aim at Penske’s enormous consolidation of entertainment media, arguing that the company now controls much of the infrastructure surrounding Hollywood awards season: the publications that cover it, the advertising campaigns that fuel it, the prediction sites that handicap it, the data businesses that measure it, and several of the awards shows themselves.
PMC’s portfolio includes Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Rolling Stone, Billboard, IndieWire, Vibe, Gold Derby, and entertainment data company Luminate. It also owns Dick Clark Productions, whose awards portfolio includes the Golden Globes, American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards and Academy of Country Music Awards. Penske’s holdings extend to SXSW as well. PMC itself describes its portfolio as encompassing those media brands alongside the Golden Globes, SXSW, the ACMs, BBMAs and AMAs.
In the lawsuit’s rather pointed formulation, the result is an ecosystem in which “Penske-owned trade publications promote Penske-owned contenders for Penske-owned awards predicted by a Penske-owned website.” The complaint additionally points to Penske business partner Todd Boehly and his Eldridge investment firm, which has investments in both PMC and A24, among numerous other companies.
That degree of vertical integration does not automatically make Penske’s business illegal, of course, and the HFPA will still have to establish an actual antitrust market, Penske’s power within it, anticompetitive conduct, and resulting injury. And the old HFPA comes to the fight with considerable baggage of its own after years of scandals over its membership, ethics, finances, and diversity.
Still, the potential conflicts of interest created by Penske’s expanding portfolio have already attracted scrutiny.
In 2024, TheWrap reported that Variety had pitched what was described as a $70,000 “Golden Globes salon dinner series” to awards campaigners, offering a panel with contending talent followed by dinner with 30 to 40 Golden Globes voters. Penske Media disputed the report, calling the sales material a “misappropriated deck” that was not in circulation and accusing competing publications of attempting to mislead readers.
The larger issue remains difficult to ignore: the same corporation can own publications whose businesses depend heavily on studio FYC advertising while also owning the awards those studios are campaigning to win. Penske also owns SXSW, another major entertainment event extensively covered and commercially activated across its own media brands. In February, PMC announced SXSW programming involving Billboard, Deadline, Rolling Stone, Variety and several other Penske properties.
Penske’s consolidation has attracted antitrust scrutiny before. In 2020, the Justice Department investigated PMC’s joint venture with MRC, including whether bringing rivals Variety and The Hollywood Reporter under the same broader operation could reduce competition. Officials were reportedly examining potential effects on advertising sales and the quality of entertainment coverage. Whatever came of that scrutiny, it did not prevent Penske’s media empire from continuing to expand.
The HFPA goes considerably further, alleging that Penske and Boehly deliberately helped engineer the group’s destruction beginning in 2021. According to the complaint, the pair used Penske-controlled Hollywood publications to encourage the industry boycott that followed the HFPA’s scandals, intentionally devaluing the organization before Boehly—who was simultaneously serving as interim CEO of the HFPA—participated in acquiring the Golden Globes through Eldridge. Penske eventually took control of the awards through Dick Clark Productions. Again, these are allegations from the HFPA and have not been proven in court.
The suit also accuses former HFPA general counsel Goeckner of helping transfer approximately $4 million from the organization to the new Golden Globe Foundation in an effort to leave the HFPA without sufficient funds to survive.
Kasowitz attorney Daniel Saunders said the alleged conduct was designed to give the defendants “even greater monopolistic control in Hollywood” while freezing out competing foreign journalists. Penske Media and the other defendants have not yet publicly responded to the allegations.
Meanwhile, there is the slightly awkward media question hanging over the entire case: how will Hollywood’s biggest trade publications cover an antitrust lawsuit accusing the company that owns many of them of monopolizing Hollywood trade media?
Despite being part of Penske Media’s portfolio, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Variety all covered the lawsuit Tuesday, with only IndieWire opting out of a corresponding story, as of Tuesday afternoon. That may obviously change, and the Penske-owned trades’ coverage is important context rather than something to minimize. But the unusual situation raises the very conflict-of-interest question at the heart of the case: how do publications independently cover a company, awards organization, festival, or industry controversy when their corporate owner increasingly sits on multiple sides of the story?
Whether the HFPA can prove its allegations is another matter, but the lawsuit raises a larger question Hollywood has mostly avoided for years: how was Penske allowed to consolidate so much of the entertainment-media ecosystem without meaningful resistance? Its expansion across competing trade publications, music media, awards coverage, industry data, festivals, live events, advertising, and the awards themselves has continued despite increasingly obvious antitrust and conflict-of-interest concerns. None of that alone proves illegal monopolization, but the concentration is difficult to ignore—and the HFPA suit may be the first serious legal challenge to a structure Hollywood has largely allowed to grow unchecked.
