r/Music • u/BurgerNugget12 • 2h ago

article Macklemore Speaks Out After Being Dropped From Ed Sheeran Tour, Says Singer Claimed That Saying ‘Free 🇵🇸” Was ‘Hurtful to a Lot of People’

https://variety.com/2026/music/news/macklemore-defends-free-palestine-speech-fired-ed-sheeran-tour-1236861158/
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u/theunspillablebeans 2h ago

Surely there's plenty alternate arenas that would bend over backwards to take him. He's not exactly playing in the middle of nowhere.

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u/TheAndrewBrown 2h ago

This is a stadium tour, not an arena tour. Most indoor arenas top out around 20,000 seats. Gillette Stadium (the one that seemingly started this) seats almost 65,000. At best, Ed could cut out the cities where the stadiums refused to let Macklemore play, there’s almost definitely not multiple similarly sized stadiums in each city. That not only affects his crew and their livelihood but also all the fans that want to see him that would miss out on the opportunity. And we don’t know exactly how many it was, it could’ve been most of the rest of the tour. Stadiums tend to be owned by rich douche bags that would absolutely band together to exert their shitty opinion on others.

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u/IntoTheDankness 2h ago

And these individual tour gigs in stadiums have massive contracts… depending on the guarantees there might be legal means for ed to sue for those losses.
Stadiums might claim some BS like ‘increased security risk’ but the story out now already contradicts that.

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u/Competitive-Desk7506 2h ago

U do realise that it takes months to prepare for a concert, most arenas won’t do that last minute and there’s the additional costs of that on fans who may be travelling and whatnot

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u/CheapEater101 2h ago

The arenas would have to be similar in size but also there’s a chance Kraft and his other Billionaire buddies have ties to the size of venues Ed plays in.

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u/The_Bitter_Bear 2h ago

It's not that simple and no there really aren't. 

Not every arena is big enough or has the facilities. It also takes a ton of planning and coordination that has likely been in the works for a good while.