From Madison Square Garden to Manchester United: Courtney Jackson’s NYC Pivot from Music to Global Sports

On a blustery Thursday morning in Midtown, Courtney Jackson sips her coffee across from Bryant Park, reflecting on a career twist that few could have predicted six years ago. In March 2020, Jackson was wrapping up months on the road, managing logistics for the Queen + Adam Lambert tour. Then, with New York’s theaters and arenas shuttered overnight, she watched a once-booming industry grind to a halt.

Rather than wait for the lights to come back up on Broadway or Barclays, Jackson scanned the horizon for new challenges. By early summer, she’d shifted gears entirely, swapping concert setlists for playbooks and joining the operations team of a major international football club with a growing New York office. The shift wasn’t just a job change—it was a wholesale reinvention, turning the chaos of the pandemic shutdown into the foundation for a new career in global sport.

Jackson’s path underscores a trend visible across the city this fall: a wave of professionals who once made New York’s live entertainment scene hum, now bringing their expertise to unexpected corners of the city’s economy. As the Champions League returns to local bars and the Jets’ season draws crowds to Hudson Yards, Jackson’s story is a reminder of how New York talent adapts when the curtain falls.

Today, she oversees US partnerships for the club, leveraging her experience wrangling artists and audiences to connect with sponsors and fans from Long Island to London. “If you can run a show at the Garden, you can handle just about anything,” she laughs. The skill set, she notes, is remarkably transferable: event management, people skills, and the ability to solve problems on the fly, whether under stage lights or stadium floodlights.

With the city’s entertainment sector regaining its pulse this autumn, Jackson says she’ll always be a New Yorker at heart—rooted in a place where reinvention isn’t just possible, but expected. “New York teaches you to keep moving, even when the world stops,” she says, stepping into the lunchtime rush, ready for whatever comes next.