The last remaining members of the group that founded the Golden Globes – and ran the ceremony for more than eight decades – is suing the media empire that rescued the awards from the scandal which threatened to be the final nail in the coffin.
An LA Times article in 2021 highlighted the fact that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had no black members – in the aftermath of the Oscars So White controversy and the murder of George Floyd. The expose also made accusations about misogyny and corruption at the organisation that had long been a joke within the entertainment industry, but that had – until then – capitalised on its own self-deprecation, not least by hiring the likes of Ricky Gervais to host its glittering ceremony.
But the LA Times claims led to an industry boycott of the organisation, whose hundred or so members had – until that point – ruled the roost and lived a life of luxury, flown around the world by studios, desperate for Golden Globe nominations that would kick-start their Oscar or Emmy campaigns.
Enter Todd Boehly – best known in the UK as the Chelsea owner – as the new CEO of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, to rescue the organisation’s shattered reputation and persuade the industry to come back on board.
The solution to save the brand – agreed by the board of the HFPA – was to sell the Golden Globes and under Boehly’s leadership, the group’s biggest assets were handed to what was already one of the biggest media organisations in Hollywood, Penske Media Eldridge; Jay Penske’s part already owned most of the industry press – including The Hollywood Reporter and Variety – and production companies, including Dick Clark Productions, best known for making the Golden Globes telecast, while the Eldridge part, which owned a stake in the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the longtime home of the Globes, and was owned by Todd Boehly.
Backed by the board, the only things stopping the transaction going through were approval from California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, who is required to agree to changes in status of charitable organisations, and a handful of ongoing court cases. But while the new group has dealt with most – but not all – of the legal action, Rob Bonta has not yet given the required approval, leaving the deal formally in limbo, although in practice, PME has been running the awards, selling the rights and managing personnel, as if all the Is were dotted and the Ts crossed.
Rather than paying the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for its greatest asset – the Golden Globes, the deal involved voting HFPA members receiving $75,000 a year, for a five year contract, to vote on the awards, and receiving tickets to future Golden Globes awards ceremonies – and those who didn’t want that commitment were offered a one-time payment of $250,000 to walk away.
About a third of the members took the money and ran – the rest signed up for the salary, but within a couple of years, conditions had been placed on the money that some found difficult to meet and by last year, the new Golden Globes organisation told its legacy members they would no longer be receiving a salary, or tickets to the ceremony, in what some of the legacy HFPA members regarded as a breach of contract.
About sixty remaining HFPA members promptly voted to oust their President, Helen Hoehne, who had long since switched her allegiance to PME’s Golden Globes LLC, and reconstitute the organisation to challenge the deal that was meant to save them, but almost wiped them out.
Now, the HFPA has launched its long anticipated legal action to try to undo the whole deal, challenging a process it describes as 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, all in violation of state and federal unfair competition and antitrust laws.”
The Association – individual participants as yet individually unnamed – is complaining on twenty counts, against the direct chain of command of management of the Globes – targeting Jay Penske, Penske Media Corporation, the Golden Globes Foundation and one of the group’s executives, Gregory Goeckner – but not directly naming Boehly himself as a defendant.
Among their complaints, the HFPA have accused Penske and Boehly of using the industry press they control – including The Hollywood Reporter and Variety magazine – to instigate the boycott of the HFPA with the goal of devaluing the organisation and rendering it vulnerable to acquisition. They then accuse Boehly of “infiltrating” the organisation as interim CEO while simultaneously serving as the buyer seeking to purchase the Globes through his Eldridge holding company.
Another accusation surrounds the former General Counsel of the HFPA, Gregory Goeckner, who has since become the CEO of the new Golden Globes Foundation, which under the agreement, was meant to take over the charitable responsibilities of the HFPA. The complainants say he conspired with Penske and Boehly to fraudulently induce the transfer of approximately $4m from the HFPA to the Foundation in an effort to starve the HFPA of funds and force the organisation to dissolve before it could bring this legal action.
They have also accused Penske and Boehly of solidifying a “vertical and horizontal monopoly” on the awards market, adding the Globes to others already owned, while controlling the highest profile trade publications that sell advertising packages for awards contestants, as well as owning production companies that compete for their own awards; Boehly’s A24, for example, won awards this year for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and Marty Supreme. As the HFPA’s lawyers, Kasowitz LLP state, “Penske-owned trade publications promote Penske-owned contenders for Penske-owned awards predicted by a Penske-owned website.”
Similarly, the HFPA has also questioned whether Penske was using his monopoly to turn the Golden Globes into a pay-to-play racket, requiring expensive “for your consideration” advertising purchases from his own trade publications as a prerequisite for awards consideration.
The latter arguments might be understandable, but is it the HFPA’s place to be making such regulatory-type complaints? Is it the HFPA’s responsibility to – in the words of their lawyers – “secure injunctive relief to prohibit the defendants from causing further harm to consumers and competitors”?
Kasowitz says the HFPA’s demands include damages exceeding $150m and the rescission of what it argues were unlawful agreements – thereby returning the control of the Globes to the HFPA.
Were they to win, though, it’s not at all clear that the industry that snubbed the HFPA after the LA Times expose would follow the Globes back to them – but with this legal action going through the courts, and a resolution unlikely before next year’s awards, scandal-wary celebrities might similarly want to distance themselves from the corporate structure that is currently pulling the strings. The future for the already tainted Globes is looking increasingly less Golden under either of the groups claiming ownership.
In response to the legal action, Penske’s operation released a robust statement, which featured in one of the group’s own publications, The Hollywood Reporter. It said “Today’s lawsuit continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organisation 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 Globes Foundation, an independent nonprofit, simply to secure Golden Globe tickets is an unfortunate distraction that inappropriately diverts resources from legitimate charitable causes. We remain troubled that the HFPA, an organisation so widely criticised for ethical failures, non-inclusivity, racism, and misconduct involving talent, continues to find attorneys willing to push such illegitimate claims.”