Former CEO of firm that produces ‘Love Island’ sues ad agency for $100 million

The former chief executive of WPP’s Motion Content Group — the producer behind “Love Island” and other reality TV shows — is suing the ad agency, saying he was fired after he flagged alleged improper billing practices.

In the lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, Richard Foster said he was ousted after he repeatedly warned senior managers about alleged “kickback practices” involving the company’s “rebate-driven deals” that he said “were unsustainable, unlawful, and a significant threat to the Company.”

Foster, a 17-year veteran, led WPP’s media division that is the producer and co-financier of “Love Island” and some 2,500 other television shows around the world. The division was rebranded in 2023 as GroupM Motion Entertainment in North America.

Foster alleged in his lawsuit that GroupM leveraged “client budgets to secure inventory deals” from media companies that included cash rebates, inventory discounts and other financial incentives, and that these transactions were not always transparent or disclosed to clients.

Over the last five years, the lawsuit states, the company “generated rebate-driven deals valued between $3 [billion] and $4 billion, of which it improperly retained approximately $1.5 [billion] to $2 billion.”

But rather than confront the issues, Foster claims executives “marginalized him, and ultimately terminated him and his team to cover up their own improper practices.”

WPP disputed the claims.

“The Company is aware of a lawsuit in the New York State Court filed by a former employee who was let go in a recent organizational restructuring,” a WPP spokesperson said in a statement. “The court has not yet made any findings in relation to the allegations and we will defend them vigorously.”

In December, Foster submitted a 35-page internal report emphasizing that there were opportunities to establish a new entertainment division, but warned that its use of rebates could pose “possible legal and reputational” risks to the company.

At one point, Foster alleged that he told one executive that “WPP and GroupM have ‘been sleepwalking to the edge of a cliff and people don’t want to hear it.’”

In January, Foster said he was asked to discuss the report with Brian Lesser, global CEO of GroupM, who “expressed concern about the legal risks tied to GroupM Trading and said he would investigate this further.” Days later Foster claimed that he received a text from Lesser asking him to send a “sanitized version of the report” and “to exclude any overt criticism of [GroupM Trading] as that is not in the spirit of working together.”

Eventually, Foster said he was terminated on July 10. He is seeking $100 million in damages.

“Richard Foster devoted nearly two decades to helping build one of the world’s most successful media and entertainment creation operations,” his attorney, William A. Brewer III, partner at Brewer, Attorneys & Counselors, said in a statement. “When he stood up for transparency and accountability at WPP, he was let go. This case will shine a light on systemic misconduct and the retaliation faced by an executive who refused to go along to get along.”