Five publicly identified guests at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Madison Square Garden wedding turned up on a very different kind of list. Madison Square Garden Entertainment has been quietly running risk scores on the celebrities who pass through its doors, and the newlyweds’ own party wasn’t exempt, according to a report published Thursday by WIRED Magazine.
The revelation lands weeks after a hacker collective dumped internal Garden files online, raising fresh questions about how far the arena’s security operation reaches into guests’ private lives.
Swift-Kelce’s Wedding Guests Land on Secret Risk List
An internal Madison Square Garden “talent” database contains roughly 39,539 entries of famous names in business, politics, media and sports, alongside their guests, according to WIRED reporters Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner. Within that pile, about 400 celebrities carry a risk and five people confirmed to have attended the Swift-Kelce ceremony are among them.
Musicians Ice Spice, Selena Gomez and Benson Boone, television host Michael Strahan and actor Mariska Hargitay were each marked “low risk,” WIRED reported. That tier sits second from the bottom on a scale climbing from “flag” through “medium risk,” “high risk” and finally “DO NOT HOST” or an outright ban.
Podcast hosts Pablo Torre walked through the tiers on Thursday’s Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast. Even a “low risk” label signals a celebrity has “done something in the publicity world, the social media world, that has caught the attention of the wrong people,” according to a source with knowledge of the database, Torre reported.
Knicks Celebrity Fans Also Show Up in Files
The database’s reach extends well past wedding guests. Rapper Fat Joe, who has publicly praised Knicks owner James Dolan, is nonetheless listed as “medium risk,” a designation the database ties to his friendship with fellow rapper Jadakiss, who criticized Dolan back in 2020. Vogue editorial director Anna Wintour carries the same medium-risk label despite no documented criticism of Dolan or the Garden, according to WIRED’s reporting.
Comedian Adam Pally and producer Pete Rock are both marked “DO NOT HOST,” barring them from complimentary tickets, while rapper Lil Tjay is banned outright after an incident at the Garden’s Hulu Theater, according to WIRED. The leak of the secret surveillance list traces back to ShinyHunters, a hacker group that first broke the story of the breach after MSG declined to pay a ransom.
MSG Tracks LGBTQ+ Celebrities, Report Says
The database also tracks sensitive personal categories unrelated to security. Ninety-three entries are labeled “LGBTQIA,” including singer Ricky Martin and musician Phoebe Bridgers. Evan Greer, director of the digital rights group Fight for the Future, said the pattern echoes prior surveillance of a trans woman previously documented by WIRED.
“They just seem overly interested in queer and trans people in their venue,” Greer said, as quoted by Shachtman and Varner.
The talent file is only one piece of the leak. A far larger trove pulled from the Garden’s Salesforce system holds close to 10.5 million unique email addresses tied to ordinary ticket buyers, not just celebrities, according to WIRED. A separate “cases” database includes a request for a full threat check on NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, complete with her home address at the time.
A class-action lawsuit filed against the Garden organization in June argues the entire leak traces back to Dolan’s expanding surveillance practices, which already include facial recognition scanning at Garden-owned venues from Radio City Music Hall to the Sphere in Las Vegas.
MSG did not respond to WIRED‘s request for comment, the reporters noted. Dolan attended the Swift-Kelce wedding himself, a detail hosts of the podcast that broke the story noted with some irony given the scope of the arena’s own surveillance operation.
Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce Wedding Guests Appear on Secret MSG Risk List: Report