Meet the ‘Unflappable’ Exec Bringing Superstars To Madison Square Garden and Sphere
Categoria: Musica
MSG Entertainment president and Billboard's Touring Executive of the Year Josephine Vaccarello has built relationships that translate into history-making runs at the company's venues.
Por Billboard | 06/11/2026
On her first day of work at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in 1998, Josephine Vaccarello — just a month out of college, starting a job as an administrative assistant — left the building in the evening and had to use the after-hours exit. That required walking through the opulent theater itself, and she wasn’t about to waste the moment. “I was like, ‘I’m standing on the stage of Radio City Music Hall. I’m just going to do a thing!’ ” Vaccarello recalls today. So the self-professed “theater kid” from Long Island launched into “On My Own,” Éponine’s iconic lament from Les Misérables . “I had to go for it,” she says with a proud grin. Nearly 30 years later, Vaccarello is sitting high above Midtown Manhattan on the roof of 2 Penn next to Madison Square Garden, which bought Radio City six months after she started that job. She’s in a very different position: In September, after three years as executive vp, live of Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) — where she’s spent her entire career — she was named its president. “I’m going to be honest: I never wanted to leave,” Vaccarello, 50, says of her time with the company. “I love the company I work for. I love the buildings I get to work in. It still makes me get excited when I stand inside any of the venues and watch an entire room of people singing every word to every song, and I’m like, ‘I get to be part of that.’ It’s cool.” Related Touring Power Players: Billboard’s 2026 List Revealed Kenny MacPherson, Veteran Music Publisher and Big Deal Music Co-Founder, Dies at 71 Diddy Moved From New Jersey Prison to Similar Facility in Pennsylvania Since the promotion, she hasn’t exactly kicked back to celebrate: The week we speak took her to Sphere in Las Vegas, where she oversees residencies, for Metallica’s opening; the Garden for a New York Rangers hockey game and two Harry Styles shows, part of his historic 30-night Together, Together residency; and the 30 Rock cast reunion at Radio City, back where it all started. Banner years may be business as usual at this point for both Sphere and the Garden, but even by those standards, 2026 was exceptional for both. The singular Las Vegas venue, in its third full year of operation, diversified its artist bookings with acts ranging from Carín León to No Doubt. The arena’s year was led by three monumental events: the New York Knicks’ NBA championship win; Styles’ residency; and a certain wedding of music and sports royalty (though of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s nuptials, even Vaccarello can only say with a smile, “It occurred. It happened”). And this past summer was the biggest in the Garden’s history, with 57 shows (including multinight runs from Rush and Bon Jovi) compared with the previous year’s 36. The list of what now falls under Vaccarello’s purview at the Garden is almost comically long — concerts, comedy, family entertainment, performing arts productions, Radio City’s Christmas Spectacular , sports properties, ticketing, suites