The Kennedy Center plans to move its ticketing operations to Ticketmaster, a transition that coincides with executive-level financial ties to the ticket giant’s parent company.
Executives Face Financial Ties
Richard Grenell became president of the Kennedy Center in February 2025. President Donald Trump became the institution’s chairman at that time. In May, Grenell joined the board of directors of Live Nation Entertainment, the parent company of Ticketmaster, as reported in NPR.
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Grenell received total director compensation of $260,205 from Live Nation during 2025. This compensation included $62,088 in cash fees and stock awards valued at $198,117. He also received 102 shares of Live Nation stock upon joining the board, worth about $14,200 at the time.
Tax filings for the Kennedy Center reported that Grenell was paid nothing for his service as its president. Richard Briffault, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in government ethics, said holding both roles creates conflict-of-interest concerns. He cited overlapping fiduciary responsibilities.
“This is literally conflict of interest,” Briffault said, as WHQR reported.
“If you have a duty of loyalty to an entity in which you’re an officer – if you sit on the board and at the same time you have a financial stake in another entity that does business with, and benefits from, the business with the entity on whose board you sit – that’s a problem,” Briffault told NPR.
Procurement Timeline Faces Scrutiny
The Kennedy Center said that discussions regarding a switch to Ticketmaster began in the spring of 2024. This date preceded Grenell’s appointment as president. In a statement reported by KGOU, the institution said, “The Center began evaluating Ticketmaster in the spring of 2024 and determined it had outgrown its previous ticketing system. The agreement followed standard procurement review.”
That timeline is disputed by current and former employees. A former senior executive disputed that Ticketmaster was under serious consideration by leadership in 2024.
“I was against having Ticketmaster at the Kennedy Center,” the former executive wrote in a message to NPR. “We had great ticketing staff and a system with Tessitura that gave us the capacity and ‘intelligence’ to manage our own data and customers. Ticketmaster could say they were trying to talk to us, but they absolutely were not negotiating with us.”
Ticketmaster disputed those accounts in a statement. The company said, “We categorically deny that anyone pressured the Kennedy Center to choose Ticketmaster. In fact, Kennedy Center ticketing staff first approached our team in February 2024 and almost immediately indicated wanting to switch to Ticketmaster because of limitations with their existing ticketing system.”
Kennedy Center Switches from Tessitura to Ticketmaster
For decades, the Kennedy Center used Tessitura, a not-for-profit platform developed by the Metropolitan Opera in 1995. Steve Jacobson, founder of nonprofit arts consultancy JCA, said Tessitura is used by more than 750 arts and culture institutions worldwide to manage ticketing, fundraising, membership, and customer service in an all-in-one system.
Jacobson said Ticketmaster works well for arena shows and high-volume commercial events. He described it as “one-dimensional, and it’s really designed for commercial presenters.”
The transition comes as the annual Kennedy Center Honors approaches. The event is scheduled for December 7 at Washington’s Capital One Arena. As of November 11, the public could not yet buy tickets directly, with the center providing only a submission form to receive information on how to buy them. Grenell stepped down as Kennedy Center president in March 2026 while remaining on Live Nation’s board.