MSG Calls Macklemore 'Not an Arena Level Act' After Tour Rejections
Seven Lights
Madison Square Garden pushed back after Macklemore said nine major U.S. arenas had refused to host his Free Palestine tour. An MSG Entertainment spokesperson told TMZ that the New York venue and its sister arenas have “extremely limited availability” and that the rapper “is not an arena level act.”
In a lengthy statement posted to Instagram on Nov. 6, Macklemore said his team was offered open dates at the nine arenas by mid-September, but that the offers were withdrawn once the venues learned the concerts were benefit shows for Palestine. “The doors were closed. The conversations were all different, but the result was the same,” he wrote. “In over twenty years of touring, I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
He named four venues in the New York area: Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Prudential Center in Newark and UBS Arena on Long Island. The others, he said, were the Intuit Dome, Kia Forum and Crypto.com Arena in the Los Angeles area, Chase Center in San Francisco and Climate Pledge Arena in his hometown of Seattle.
The rapper accused venue owners of trying to silence his support for Palestinians and said the rejections fit a broader pattern of pressure on performers. “We live in a country that prides itself on freedom of speech,” he wrote. “Yet we’ve reached a point where a handful of billionaires can decide which causes are acceptable, which voices are welcome and which human lives are worth defending.”
The dispute follows Macklemore’s removal from Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour in September after pro-Palestinian speeches at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Robert Kraft, owner of Gillette Stadium and the New England Patriots, said he would not allow the rapper to perform at his venue, and Sheeran later said the decision was made by promoters and venue owners, not himself. Support acts including Finneas, Beoga and Lukas Graham withdrew from the tour in solidarity, and Macklemore pledged his entire $1 million in earnings from the Sheeran tour to six organizations supporting Palestinians.
The Free Palestine Tour began in Dublin on Oct. 26 with Hozier and Kneecap and sold out three European dates, with Aurora, Pomme and Portugal. The Man among the performers in Paris and Greta Thunberg, Paloma Faith and Nemahsis appearing in London.
Macklemore said he would keep organizing benefit concerts even if conventional arenas stay closed to him, adding that the shows may move outdoors. “There will be more shows for Palestine,” he wrote. “We will build our own stages. They may own the arenas. But they do not own the people who fill them. And they never will.”