Back in September, after being removed from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour, Macklemore announced his own Free Palestine Tour, with the intention of proceeds going towards Palestine-focused charities and organizations. Initially, the tour was just three shows set to take place in Dublin, London and Paris during October. Noticeably, there were no dates in the U.S., which Macklemore just addressed.
On November 6th, Macklemore gave fans clarity in regards to why the Free Palestine Tour only consisted of 3 dates in the UK and Europe. Macklemore claims that allegedly 9 major arenas in the U.S. all turned down hosting his upcoming tour. Those 9 arenas include Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center in New York City, New York’s UBS Arena, the Prudential Center in New Jersey, the Crypto.com Arena, Intuit Dome and Kia Forum in Los Angeles, the Chase Center in San Francisco, and the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
Macklore also shares, “By mid-September, we received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year. But once they found out these were benefit shows for Palestine, these dates were suddenly off the table. The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same. The shows were not going to be allowed to happen in these venues.”
Madison Square Garden did respond to Macklemore’s claims with, “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he’s not an arena level act.”
Read Macklemore’s entire statement below.
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