Madison Square Garden Sues Wired for Defamation Over Report on Alleged LGBTQIA Celebrity Database

Madison Square Garden's parent company has filed a defamation lawsuit against Wired, accusing the publication of twisting hacked data into a false story claiming the Manhattan venue tracked celebrities' sexual orientation and gender identity as part of a surveillance database.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Manhattan court, targets a July 9 article that reported MSG had compiled a database logging information on hundreds of music stars and other public figures, including whether they identified as LGBTQIA.

The piece, headlined to suggest MSG kept a list of gay celebrities, named artists such as Morgan Wallen, Ice Spice, Selena Gomez, Benson Boone, Fat Joe, Ricky Martin, Phoebe Bridgers and Geese frontwoman Emily Green as among those tagged in the records.

MSG's attorneys described the story as reckless and unethical, arguing that Wired and its staff manipulated stolen data to paint the company as hostile toward LGBTQIA people when, according to the filing, the opposite is true.

The database at the center of the dispute originated from a massive breach of MSG Entertainment's systems, carried out by a hacking group known as ShinyHunters after the company declined to pay a ransom demand. That same breach has already exposed MSG to a wave of class-action lawsuits from individuals whose personal information was allegedly swept up and leaked.

MSG Entertainment's holdings extend beyond the arena itself to include the Chicago Theatre, Radio City Music Hall and The Beacon Theatre, all of which were reportedly implicated in the leaked records.

Wired's reporting described a system that assigned incoming or prospective guests a risk rating, with categories running from low risk up to an outright do-not-host designation, and noted that the roster included several people who had attended Taylor Swift's wedding celebrations.

The article also noted that around 100 of the roughly 40,000 names in the database carried an LGBTQIA tag, and that the reasoning behind that specific label was not clear from the data itself. MSG's legal team seized on that ambiguity, arguing that the story's framing and headline created a misleading impression that the company was profiling LGBTQIA figures for exclusion or discrimination rather than, as MSG claims, supporting that community.

The lawsuit does not stop at the publication itself. It also names Wired's parent company, Advance Magazine Publishers, along with contributing editor Noah Shachtman, co-author Maddy Varner and global editorial director Katie Drummond as individual defendants, holding them responsible for how the story was reported and published.

MSG's filing devotes particular attention to Shachtman, referencing a past controversy in which he was accused of leaving out significant details about a federal investigation into child sexual abuse material in a story involving someone he had a personal relationship with. The lawsuit uses that history to suggest a pattern, alleging that this was not the first time Shachtman or Wired had shaped coverage to fit a narrative decided on in advance.

Wired has pushed back firmly, saying in a statement posted to X that it stands behind its reporting and intends to fight the lawsuit, which it characterized as baseless. The publication said it plans to continue examining MSG and the broader use of technology across the entertainment holdings of the company's billionaire owner, framing the coverage as part of journalism's core function of scrutinizing powerful institutions.

Legal experts note that defamation suits brought by large corporations or prominent public figures face a notably high bar under U.S. law. To prevail, MSG would need to show not just that Wired's reporting was false, but that it was published with actual malice, meaning Wired either knew the claims were untrue or acted with reckless disregard for whether they were accurate.