The former Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in a California court against Penske Media, the company that owns the Golden Globes, questioning the controversial sale and restructuring of these prestigious awards.
The 113-page complaint accuses Penske Media of violating federal and state antitrust laws through a “clandestine scheme” designed to take control of the awards show.
According to the text, the maneuver sought to “fraudulently acquire the prestigious Golden Globes, with 80 years of history, destroy its founder and former owner, the HFPA, and exercise monopolistic control over the Hollywood advertising, awards and commerce markets.”
Among its main demands, the HFPA demands compensation of at least $150 million in damages, as well as the complete annulment of the contractual agreements that transferred the rights to the awards. The entity also argues that the operation improperly relied on a non-profit organization – the Golden Globes Foundation (GGF) – to promote anti-competitive conduct and remove its former members from the industry.
Background and response
For eight decades, the HFPA served as the nonprofit awarder of the awards. However, in February 2021, a journalistic investigation by the Los Angeles Times uncovered serious ethical failures and zero diversity in its membership—not having any black members—which caused a widespread boycott of the audiovisual industry.
This scandal led to the sale of the awards assets to Penske Media in 2023. Although the HFPA planned to dissolve, in May 2025 it paralyzed the process to investigate alleged irregularities in the commercial transfer.
For its part, Penske Media called the lawsuit “absurd” and “irrational.” A company spokesperson stated that "the Golden Globes transaction closed more than three years ago and received all necessary approvals; any claim that it can still be reversed is flatly false." Likewise, he regretted that the HFPA—an organization criticized for its “ethical failures and lack of inclusion”—diverted resources with what he described as an “illegitimate distraction.”
