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LAURIE JACOBY
Senior vp New York concerts and entertainment, Madison Square Garden
$209.3 MILLION IN TICKET SALES: Jacoby's concert curation helped drive a 1.5 percent bump in revenue in 2018 for Manhattan's hallowed arena. All told, the Garden sold 2 million concert tickets to 140 shows for a total gross of $184 million -- enough to put it atop Billboard's year-end ranking of the top live venues with a capacity of more than 15,000. Among the live-music milestones of last year were four-night runs from Radiohead, Romeo Santos and Drake as well as Billy Joel's 100th performance at the Garden (most of them a product of his five-years-and-running residency). "And we do that with two teams in the building," says Jacoby, who reveals that her "pinch me" moment of the year was booking Mumford & Sons for "two magnificent shows" after pursuing the band for 10 years.