2026 Impact 50 Honoree: Josephine Vaccarello

JOSEPHINE VACCARELLO
Executive Vice President, Live
Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. & Sphere Entertainment Co

BY THE NUMBER: $246.3 million. revenue Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. reported for the fiscal 2026 third quarter, an increase of $3.8 million.
FAV MUSICIAN AS A TWEEN: Madonna.

Josephine Vaccarello is the widely respected EVP of Live for Madison Square Garden in New York and Sphere in Las Vegas. Throughout her tenure at MSG Entertainment, the company’s portfolio of venues has consistently ranked among the top in the world.

She shared highlights from the past year and a glimpse of the future with Pollstar.

• The initiative that really stands out was the introduction of Sphere Immersive Sound – the world’s most advanced concert audio system – at Radio City Music Hall. Sphere Immersive Sound, which is also installed at Sphere in Las Vegas and the Beacon Theatre in NYC, uses next-generation 3D audio beamforming and wave field synthesis technology to transform how audio is delivered, resulting in controlled, consistent and crystal-clear audio for audiences, regardless of where they are seated in the venue.

• Every artist that plays Sphere collaborates with the team at Sphere Studios to utilize the venue’s technologies in new and different ways. Recently, we worked with Phish, their longtime lighting designer Chris Kuroda, and Moment Factory to launch a virtual light rig – a real-time engine that replicates the dynamics of a physical light show directly on Sphere’s immersive media plane. This allowed Kuroda to command more than 7,000 virtual DMX lights with the same organic, improvisational fluidity as his physical rig.

• We believe there’s great value in hosting residencies at our venues, and we have many multi-night runs in New York, Chicago and Las Vegas this summer and beyond. At The World’s Most Famous Arena, Summer 2026 is set to be a banner season for bookings … We’re especially excited that Madison Square Garden is hosting Harry Styles’ only US shows, with his months-long, 30-night residency beginning in August, and we will be celebrating this residency with fans both onsite at The Garden and across NYC.