Live from New York, it’s MSNBC.
MSNBC is bringing back its flagship live fan event for a second year, seeking to expand the cable channel’s business lines as it prepares for a looking spinout from NBCUniversal into Versant.
The 2025 installment will be called MSNBCLIVE ‘25: This Is Who We Are, and take place on Saturday Oct. 11 in Manhattan’s Hammerstein Ballroom. Tickets for the event go on sale today, starting at $100. As with last year, there will also be special lunches and dinners with MSNBC talent, and the panels will eventually also run on MSNBC.
This year’s event will see the return of primetime stars Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki and Lawrence O’Donnell, with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, Jacob Soboroff and Nicolle Wallace joining for the first time. Chris Hayes, Ari Melber, Stephanie Ruhle and other hosts will also return.
The event will be structured around a morning session and an evening session, with lunch and dinner sessions also featuring conversations with top talent.
MSNBC launched its live events business in late 2023, bringing back former host Luke Russert to spearhead the division. Russert will be host and creative director of this year’s event.
MSNBC said that last year’s event, held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, had more than 4,000 attendees.
“We thought we’d get a lot of East Coast viewers, but it truly was an international event— people came from places like London and Hawaii,” Russert tells The Hollywood Reporter. “There was also an energy in the room that our team could feel and tapped into. Lawrence O’Donnell told me it felt like a rock concert.”
MSNBC, like all cable channels, has been adapting to the declines in linear TV by seeking new revenue streams. Live events and digital media have emerged as the primary modes of engagement outside the pay-TV bundle. The channel is not alone in that effort either, Fox News has for the last six years hosted the Patriot Awards, also selling tickets and bringing its hosts to an event space where they can engage with fans.
“Last year we were really trying to gauge what the appetite was for an event like this, as Rachel said on air, we were really ‘trying it out,’” Russert said. “This year, knowing what the demand is and having an idea of what motivated the audience, we really are going to lean into making it a space where our viewers can not only engage with our hosts and contributors but each other and hopefully leave feeling inspired and informed.”
