27th Annual Webby Awards

May 2023. New York City, Cipriani Wall Street

Empire is honored to have produced the 27th Annual Webby Awards at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City.

For the second consecutive year, Empire booked Roy Wood Jr. (from the Daily Show & White House Correspondents Dinner) to host and he kicked off the show with another tech-savvy monologue that addressed the rise of A.I., among other issues.

As always, the Webbys honored a variety of the internet’s best including SZA, Sharon Horgan, Anderson Cooper, Hoda Kotb, Toby Nwigwe & many more. The Webbys are the Internet’s highest honor, and the show is renowned for allowing winners just 5 words for their acceptance speeches. Nevertheless, this year’s winners showed that 5 words is sometimes all you need.

After a roaring round of applause for Webby Artist of the Year SZA, she took the stage and used her 5 words to ironically say “The internet scares me. Thanks!”.

The show also included poignant moments highlighting how the internet helped bring greater attention and continued dialogue to serious social issues such as the killing of George Floyd and the oppression of women in Iran.

Following the show, attendees headed uptown to Marquee for the highly anticipated afterparty where Empire presented DJ Jazzy Jeff to spin and keep the dance floor packed.

Empire produced nearly all aspects of the event from the Red Carpet, the show itself and the after party. Partners this year included Special Guest who led on all things design and Sunshine Sachs who worked to create a buzzy Red Carpet and Media Room.

Empire is honored to have been chosen to produce every live Webby Awards event since 2005, and we consider the Webby Awards team part of the Empire family.

The full show is available to view here.

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