Since 1978, the Kennedy Center Honors has been a fixture on the Washington, D.C., social calendar. Attendees at the annual December gala would be wined, dined and have an up-close glimpse of the honorees, who over the years included Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Crystal and Queen Latifah. Tickets were a hot item with high-level donors getting first dibs, which would have gone out in early summer.
The Kennedy Center Honors will be held on Dec. 7 at Washington's Capital One Arena. This year's event will celebrate songwriter Paul Anka, music producer David Foster, actor Andy Garcia, playwright David Mamet and country music singer Barbara Mandrell.
As of Nov. 11, there is only a submission form to receive information about how to buy 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 staffers, the delay is due to the center's decision to swap ticketing platforms. They asked for anonymity for fear of repercussion and their ability to continue to work in arts administration.
For decades, the Kennedy Center has used a not-for-profit platform called Tessitura to handle its ticketing. But the Kennedy Center plans to partner with the ticketing behemoth Ticketmaster. While that relationship was being negotiated, the then-president of the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell, was being paid as a board member at Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation.
The switch comes amidst ongoing turmoil 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 being paid by Live Nation
Grenell was appointed as president of the Kennedy Center when Trump became the institution's chairman in Feb. 2025. A few months later, in May, he was appointed to Live Nation's board, for which he was given a salary and stock that amounted to far more than he was paid to run the Kennedy Center.
According to Live Nation's most recent filings to the SEC, Grenell was paid $260,205 for his work on Live Nation's board in 2025. Other Live Nation SEC filings show Grenell was also given 102 shares of Live Nation stock, at the time worth approximately $14,200, upon joining the company's board.
The Kennedy Center's most recent tax filings say that Grenell was paid nothing as its president.
The Kennedy Center declined to comment on Grenell's concurrent positions with 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 not answered.
Richard Briffault is a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in government ethics. He said Grenell's employment at the Kennedy Center while serving as a board member for Live Nation – with fiduciary responsibilities to both – would typically raise concerns about conflicts of interest.
"This is literally conflict of interest," Bruffault said. "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."
Kennedy Center spokesperson PJ Elliott said discussions of moving the institution's ticketing to Ticketmaster have been ongoing since 2024 – during the Biden administration and pre-dating Grenell's appointment as the center's president.
Elliott declined to say when the changeover would happen or why the arts institution is changing its ticketing platform. Elliott also declined to respond to 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 it had outgrown its previous ticketing system. The agreement followed standard procurement review."
A second highly placed current employee, as well as a former employee of the center, both of whom declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Ticketmaster was never under serious consideration by the center's leadership in 2024.
In a message to NPR, the former senior executive wrote: "I was against having Ticketmaster at the Kennedy Center. 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 did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.
Why ticketing systems are important to nonprofit arts centers
Many large performing arts institutions use Tessitura, a not-for-profit platform which was 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 that specializes in helping nonprofit arts clients optimize their revenue. Jacobson said Ticketmaster can be great for high-volume events and venues like arena shows and museums, "but it's one-dimensional, and it's really designed for commercial presenters," he said.
Jacobson said Tessitura fits a non-profit's needs, and is currently used by over 750 arts and culture institutions around the world. "It's a unified product that has not just ticket sales in it, but also helps nonprofit arts organizations manage their fundraising, membership, customer service, education. You've got an all-in-one system." To replicate all those functions, he said, would be an expensive prospect.
Jacobson added that such a system is particularly essential for a not-for-profit arts institution, which relies on a combination of earned income – including ticket sales and donations – whether that comes from government, corporate gifts or individual donations. "And having it all in one place where you can actually manage all of your outreach, and understand who your patrons are, is really important," he said.
Ticketing decisions made amid Kennedy Center leadership changes
Matt Floca replaced Grenell as the Kennedy Center's president when Grenell departed in March. Floca previously served as the center's head of facilities and had no experience in artistic direction, fundraising or arts administration, unlike his peers at similar not-for-profit major arts venues around the country. So Floca leaned on the man who eventually became 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 specialized in working with 1980s and '90s rock acts like ZZ Top and former Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. Canny had been working as a consultant to the Kennedy Center since April 2025, serving as the creative lead for the Kennedy Center Honors and the Mark Twain Prize.
In an email Floca sent to Kennedy Center staffers last month, Floca wrote: "Rick will advise me and the broader leadership team on artistic strategy, business practices, presenting and talent curation, ticketing and pricing models, media opportunities and programming sponsorships."
NPR has obtained an email Canny wrote in March to the center's then-chief financial officer, Donna Arduin Kauranen, while he was still a consultant to the Kennedy Center. In the email, Canny puts himself forward to supervise not just programming, but also marketing, ticketing and publicity: "I work across all of these areas. But I need to be empowered to execute all the plans," he wrote. Canny has not responded to NPR's multiple attempts to reach him.
In that email, Canny told Kauranen that he was chiefly responsible for the center's move to Ticketmaster, writing: "I've been advising on this for almost a year. I've shaped many or most of the terms of the deal and I'm reviewing the final agreement tonight."
The former and current Kennedy Center employees who spoke to NPR say that such a deal would have been the responsibility of the president of the Kennedy Center, but is now being decided by the artistic director Canny.
Part of the delay of the Kennedy Center's implementation of Ticketmaster has to do with unionized box office workers. In his email to Kauranen in March, Canny blamed their union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), for impeding his new vision. "The unions got in the way and they [Ticketmaster] could no longer make money with us. With care and time, they can come back," he wrote.
The Kennedy Center center laid off its IATSE union members who worked for the box office earlier this fall, after the center's main building was closed for Trump's planned two-year renovation.
Ticketmaster has long been a company that music and live event fans love to hate. Audiences and watchdogs alike frequently complain about inflated and hidden fees, as well as the company's market domination of live event venues. As of earlier this year, Live Nation controlled about 80% of all primary concert ticket sales in the U.S., as well as an increasing number of ticket resales.
The Department of Justice filed a federal antitrust suit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, earlier this year. That suit was settled in March for $280 million.
