Richard Grenell attends the opening night of Les Miserables at the Kennedy Center on June 11, 2025 in Washington, DC
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Shannon Finney/Getty Images
Since 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors have been a part of the Washington, DC social calendar. Attendees of the annual December gala would have been able to drink, dine and get a close-up look at the honorees, who over the years have included Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Crystal and Queen Latifah. Tickets were a hot topic, with high-profile donors receiving the first donations, which would have been distributed in early summer.
The Kennedy Center Honors will take place December 7 at the Capital One Arena in Washington. This year’s event will honor songwriter Paul Anka, music producer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country music singer Barbara Mandrell.
As of November 11, there is only a submission form to receive information on how to purchase tickets. The Kennedy Center did not provide answers to NPR about how or when tickets will be made available.
According to current and former Kennedy Center members, the delay is due to the center’s decision to swap ticketing platforms. They requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation and fear of being able to continue working in arts administration.
For decades, the Kennedy Center used a nonprofit platform called Tessitura to manage its ticketing. But the Kennedy Center is considering partnering with ticketing giant Ticketmaster. While this relationship was being negotiated, Richard Grenell, then president of the Kennedy Center, was paid as a board member of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation.
The move comes amid continued unrest at the center, including a high-profile federal lawsuit over President Trump’s desire to add his name to the institution.
Working at the Kennedy Center while getting paid by Live Nation
Grenell was named president of the Kennedy Center when Trump became president of the institution in February 2025. A few months later, in May, he was named to the board of directors of Live Nation, for which he received a salary and stock that amounted to far more than he had paid to run the Kennedy Center.
According to Live Nation’s most recent filings with the SEC, Grenell received $260,205 for his work on Live Nation’s board of directors in 2025. Other documents Live Nation filed with the SEC show that Grenell also received 102 shares of Live Nation stock, worth approximately $14,200 at the time, after joining the company’s board.
The Kennedy Center’s most recent tax returns indicate that Grenell received nothing as president.
The Kennedy Center declined to comment on Grenell’s competing positions within the arts institution and Ticketmaster’s parent company, or his financial interests in Live Nation and Ticketmaster. NPR’s multiple attempts to reach Grenell were unsuccessful.
Richard Briffault is a professor at Columbia Law School and specializes in government ethics. He said Grenell’s employment at the Kennedy Center while he was a member of Live Nation’s board of directors — with fiduciary responsibilities to both — would generally raise concerns about conflicts of interest.
“It’s literally a conflict of interest,” Bruffault said. “If you have a duty of loyalty to an entity in which you are an officer – if you serve on the board of directors and at the same time you have a financial interest in another entity that does business with and profits from business with the entity on the board of directors of which you serve – that is a problem.”
Kennedy Center spokesperson PJ Elliott said discussions about moving the institution’s ticketing to Ticketmaster have been underway since 2024 — during the Biden administration and before Grenell was named president of the center.
Elliott declined to say when the change would take place or why the arts institution is changing its ticketing platform. Elliott also declined to answer NPR’s questions about Grenell’s work on Live Nation’s board and the potential conflict of interest. Instead, Elliot wrote: “The Center began evaluating Ticketmaster in the spring of 2024 and determined that it had outgrown its previous ticketing system. The agreement followed a standard procurement review. »
A second high-ranking current employee, as well as a former employee at the center, both of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Ticketmaster was never seriously considered by center management in 2024.
In a message to NPR, the former executive wrote: “I was against the idea of having Ticketmaster at the Kennedy Center. We had a great ticketing staff and a system with Tessitura that gave us the capacity and “intelligence” to manage our own data and our customers. Ticketmaster could have said they were trying to talk to us, but they were definitely not negotiating with us.
Ticketmaster did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.
Why ticketing systems are important for nonprofit arts centers
Many major performing arts institutions use Tessitura, a nonprofit platform developed by the Metropolitan Opera in 1995. The Kennedy Center was among its first users.
Steve Jacobson is the founder of JCA, a consulting firm specializing in helping nonprofit arts clients maximize their revenue. Jacobson said Ticketmaster may be ideal for high-volume events and venues like arena shows and museums, “but it’s one-dimensional and is really designed for commercial presenters,” he said.
Jacobson said Tessitura meets the needs of a nonprofit organization and is currently used by more than 750 arts and cultural institutions around the world. “It’s a unified product that goes beyond ticket sales to help nonprofit arts organizations manage their fundraising, memberships, customer service and education. You have an all-in-one system.” According to him, replicating all these functions would be an expensive prospect.
Jacobson added that such a system is especially essential for a nonprofit arts institution, which relies on a combination of earned revenue — including ticket sales and donations — whether from government, corporate gifts or individual donations. “And having all of that in one place where you can actually manage all of your outreach and understand who your customers are is really important,” he said.
Ticketing decisions made amid Kennedy Center leadership changes
Matt Floca replaced Grenell as president of the Kennedy Center when Grenell left in March. Floca was previously responsible for the center’s facilities and had no experience in artistic direction, fundraising, or arts administration, unlike his peers working at similar major nonprofit arts venues across the country. Floca therefore relied on the man who would ultimately become the center’s next artistic director.
Last month, the Kennedy Center named Rick Canny as its new artistic director. Canny is a longtime California-based talent agent who specializes in working with ’80s and ’90s rock bands like ZZ Top and former Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. Canny had worked as a consultant to the Kennedy Center since April 2025, serving as creative lead for the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize.
In an email Floca sent to Kennedy Center staff members last month, Floca wrote: “Rick will advise me and the entire leadership team on artistic strategy, business practices, talent presentation and selection, ticketing and pricing models, media opportunities and programming sponsorships.”
NPR obtained an email that Canny wrote in March to Donna Arduin Kauranen, then the center’s chief financial officer, while he was still a consultant to the Kennedy Center. In the email, Canny offers to oversee not only programming, but also marketing, ticketing and advertising: “I work in all of these areas. But I need to be empowered to execute all plans,” he writes. Canny did not respond to NPR’s multiple attempts to reach him.
In that email, Canny told Kauranen that he was primarily responsible for moving the center to Ticketmaster, writing, “I have been advising on this for almost a year. I have worked out most or most of the terms of the agreement and am reviewing the final agreement tonight.”
Former and current Kennedy Center employees who spoke to NPR say such a deal would have been the responsibility of the Kennedy Center president, but is now being decided by artistic director Canny.
Part of the delay in implementing Ticketmaster at the Kennedy Center is due to unionized box office workers. In his email to Kauranen in March, Canny accused their union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), of obstructing his new vision. “The unions got in their way and they (Ticketmaster) could no longer make money from us. With time and care they can come back,” he wrote.
The Kennedy Center laid off its IATSE union members who worked the box office earlier this fall, after Trump closed the center’s main building for a planned two-year renovation.
Ticketmaster has long been a company that fans of music and live events love to hate. The public and watchdogs frequently complain about inflated and hidden fees, as well as the company’s dominance in the live event venue market. Earlier this year, Live Nation controlled approximately 80% of all primary concert ticket sales…
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