Penske Shakes Up Leadership of South by Southwest

New York Times

29-04-2025

Penske Media, the large publishing and events company, has quietly shaken up some of the top leadership of South by Southwest, the prominent media and tech festival.
The festival's president, Hugh Forrest, has left the company, as have 10 others, including its longtime head of communications and its chief technology officer. Penske told 150 festival employees about the changes in a video call on Friday held by Jenny Connelly, Penske Media's executive vice president, product and technology.
According to statements released by Penske Media, the festival's board elected Ms. Connelly to lead the organization as 'director in charge.' 'When Hugh was told he wasn't going to get the C.E.O. role at SXSW, and would be reporting to her, Hugh made the decision to leave SXSW,' said the statement.
But according to a statement released by Mr. Forrest, the decision wasn't voluntary.
'Leaving SXSW was definitely not my decision,' Mr. Forrest wrote in a statement. 'I put my heart and soul into this event for more than 35 years — and I was looking forward to leading several more editions. To this end, I will be rooting big time for the Austin team going forward. The city, the country, the world needs the positive energy SXSW has traditionally provided, needs it now more than ever.'
SXSW, which began as a music festival in Austin in 1987, has expanded to a two-week event that now features three tracks of programming: music, film and interactive. Penske, which owns publications like Rolling Stone and The Hollywood Reporter and events like the Golden Globes, first invested in the festival in 2021. At the time, it bought 50 percent of the company with a partner, MRC. The two partners took control of the festival two years ago by buying another 1 percent.
Many of the people laid off in the past week had been with the festival for decades, including Lillian Park, the company's head of communication, who had been employed by SXSW since 1988. 'Farewell SX,' Ms. Park wrote on her LinkedIn profile. 'I'm moving to Scotland to hang out with the sheepies.'
Mr. Forrest joined SXSW in 1989, just two years after it began, as the festival's first paid employee. He ran SXSW Interactive from 1994 to 2017. He took on the co-president role in 2022. In 2024, he was named the sole president. Mr. Forrest was widely admired inside the organization. He worked without a salary during the pandemic to help keep others employed. Last year, he took a pay cut to save additional jobs.
As part of the reorganization, Greg Rosenbaum, the co-founder and vice president of SXSW EDU, an event focused on education, has been elevated to head of programming for the entire festival, Peter Lewis, chief partnerships officer, has been promoted to lead partnerships and strategy, and Brian Hobbs, a SXSW director, is now vice president of the music festival.
As for many other festivals, the profit margins for SXSW have not returned to prepandemic levels, said Nick Barbaro, a co-founder of the festival and a board member. He added that new events in London this summer and Sydney, which started two years ago, had improved the bottom line for the organization.
Penske set ambitious goals for the 2025 South by Southwest events. But the most recent festival, held at the beginning of March, didn't reach those benchmarks, Mr. Barbaro said. A similar situation happened in 2024 and the festival laid of 23 employees then.
'The 2025 event marked the highest ever sponsorship revenue in the history of the company,' Penske said in a statement.
Next year, the annual festival will have to contend without their largest venue, the Austin Convention Center. The arena has been closed and will be rebuilt to double in size, a project that's expected to not be ready until spring 2029. Numerous staff members said they were concerned about rethinking the entire footprint of the event without Mr. Forrest's guidance.
Mr. Forrest declined to comment beyond his statement.
Penske recently revamped the company's severance policy, according to two people with knowledge of the change. The company used to offer employees who had been with the company for over a year, two weeks of pay for every year employed. But two weeks ago, that policy changed to offer employees only one week's pay for every year employed.
Mr. Barbaro said one of the key reasons the festival chose to accept an investment from Penske and its partner, MRC, back in 2021 was because Jay Penske, Penske's chief executive, said he didn't intend to meddle with the organization.
'Jay specifically said 'This is a partnership. We are working with you. We don't intend to change anything,'' Mr. Barbaro said in an interview. 'He pointed to his publications, which he allows to run pretty independently. He doesn't agree with everything 'Rolling Stone' or 'The Hollywood Reporter' writes but they have their management and they do what they want.'
As of Tuesday afternoon, only one of Penske's publications, Billboard, had reported on the shake-up at the festival.