MSG Sues Wired for Defamation Over Article About Gay Celeb Surveillance List: ‘Shockingly Unethical’

Madison Square Garden is suing Wired for defamation over an article last week claiming the Manhattan venue kept a database of hundreds of music stars and other celebrities, including their gender identity and sexual orientation.

The July 9 article, which claimed Morgan Wallen, Ice Spice, Selena Gomez, Benson Boone and Fat Joe were all tracked, was headlined “Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities.” It claimed that James Dolan’s company had tagged dozens of stars, including Ricky Martin, Phoebe Bridgers and Geese’s Emily Green, as “LGBTQIA” in the database.

In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan court Thursday (July 16) and obtained by Billboard, attorneys for MSG called the Wired story “shockingly unethical” and said the publication and its staffers “should be held accountable for their inexcusable actions.”

“Wired combed the dark web, obtained data stolen from MSG by an extortionist hacking group, and cherry-picked fragments of that data to manufacture a false narrative portraying MSG as targeting the LGBTQIA community for discriminatory purposes,” MSG’s lawyers write. “Nothing could be further from the truth — MSG is a fervent supporter of the LGBTQIA community.”

In a statement posted to X, Wired said: “We stand by this reporting, and we plan to vigorously defend it against this baseless and ridiculous lawsuit. We look forward to continuing our coverage of MSG, and on billionaire James Dolan’s use of technology across his entertainment empire. It’s one part of our wider mission and the critical job of journalists, now more than ever: holding power to account.”

The list cited in Wired’s report was part of a trove of documents released by the hacker group ShinyHunters after MSG Entertainment — which also runs the Chicago Theatre, Radio City Music Hall and The Beacon Theatre — refused to pay a ransom. MSG is facing class actions over that hack on behalf of the many people whose personal information was allegedly collected by the venue and exposed in the hack.

According to the Wired article, the MSG database assigned a risk score to various celebrities who might attend the arena, ranging from “low risk” to “DO NOT HOST.” It detailed many music stars on the list, including several of Taylor Swift’s wedding guests. The article also reported that roughly 100 of the 40,000 people on the list were given the LGBTQIA tag – and that the reason for the label was “unclear.”

In its lawsuit on Thursday, MSG said that element of the story and a “sensational headline” at the top were intended to create a “false implication” about “LGBTQIA surveillance, risk, and discrimination.”

“This case is about defendants’ decision to transform inclusion into exclusion,” the company’s lawyers write. “Defendants’ article and its promotion falsely implied that MSG maintains sexual orientation information to identify, track, rank, exclude, or discriminate against LGBTQIA celebrities, artists, guests, fans, and patrons because of their sexual orientation or gender identity when the opposite is true.”

The lawsuit also names Wired owner Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. as a defendant, as well as contributing editor Noah Shachtman, co-author Maddy Varner, and global editorial director Katie Drummond over their roles in the story’s publication.

Defamation cases filed by powerful public figures or corporations are often difficult to win under U.S. law. An entity like MSG must prove that Wired‘s story was not only false, but that the publication ran the story with so-called actual malice — meaning it either knew the story was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. That is an intentionally difficult standard to meet, designed to prevent the use of the court system to restrict free speech.