MSG Entertainment Elevates Josephine Vaccarello to President

Madison Square Garden Entertainment has named longtime executive Josephine Vaccarello president of MSG Entertainment, significantly expanding her responsibilities across the company’s live event, booking and productions businesses while keeping her involved in concert programming at Sphere.

Vaccarello most recently served as executive vice president, Live, overseeing the company’s live entertainment bookings. In the newly elevated role, she will oversee strategy and operations across multiple parts of MSG Entertainment, with responsibilities spanning entertainment and sports bookings, productions and efforts to maximize both the company’s event calendar and ticket sales.

Her booking oversight includes concerts, family shows, comedy, performing arts, special events and sporting events other than New York Knicks and New York Rangers games. Vaccarello will also oversee MSG Entertainment’s productions business, including the Radio City Rockettes and the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes.

The promotion puts Vaccarello in a particularly broad role across MSG’s live entertainment operation. The company specifically said she will work with executive leadership on growing the business by maximizing its calendar and ticket sales, giving her expanded responsibility over both the events coming into MSG venues and the commercial performance of those bookings.

Vaccarello will simultaneously continue overseeing bookings for concert residencies and touring acts at Sphere in Las Vegas. Sphere is owned by the separately traded Sphere Entertainment Co., but remains part of the broader MSG family of companies.

MSG Entertainment Executive Chairman and CEO James Dolan said Vaccarello’s nearly three decades with the company, knowledge of its businesses and relationships across live entertainment will be important as MSG looks for additional growth opportunities.

“I am honored to take on this expanded role and look forward to continuing to work with teams across the MSG Family of Companies,” Vaccarello said in announcing the promotion.

From Administrative Assistant to MSG President

Vaccarello joined the company in 1998 as an administrative assistant after graduating from SUNY Albany with a communications degree. A new Pollstar profile of Vaccarello says she initially worked at Radio City Music Hall and moved with the operation after Madison Square Garden acquired Radio City roughly six months after she arrived.

She subsequently rose through MSG’s live division and became closely involved with some of the company’s highest-profile concert bookings and residency strategies.

Those include Billy Joel’s decade-long franchise run at Madison Square Garden, which ultimately reached 150 performances, as well as Harry Styles’ residency business at the Garden and concert bookings at Sphere beginning with U2’s opening run in 2023.

Pollstar reported that Vaccarello’s approach to the business has been driven in part by a willingness to involve herself across different areas of venue operations and booking. “I am inquisitive. I want to know how to do everything,” she told the publication. One early example cited in the profile was Vaccarello’s push to bring comedian Dane Cook to Madison Square Garden for an arena run in 2006, at a time when arena-scale comedy bookings were far less common.

Vaccarello has also had a role in the rollout of Sphere Immersive Sound across MSG properties. The technology debuted for concerts at Beacon Theatre before becoming a core component of Sphere and later being introduced at Radio City Music Hall.

The scale of the venues under Vaccarello’s booking influence is substantial. Pollstar’s third-quarter 2026 rankings put Sphere first among arenas by gross, with more than $315 million generated from roughly 1.55 million tickets sold, while Madison Square Garden ranked second at nearly $225 million from approximately 1.43 million tickets. Radio City Music Hall led Pollstar’s theater rankings with more than $192 million in reported gross.

MSG said Vaccarello has also been recognized on Billboard’s Power 100 and Women in Music lists and by Pollstar’s Impact 50 and Women of Live Hall of Fame.

Her elevation makes the executive who has spent much of her career building MSG’s concert and residency calendar responsible for a considerably larger portion of the company’s live entertainment business — while preserving her direct role in shaping the developing residency lineup at Sphere.