Macklemore has accused nine major American arenas of refusing to host his Free Palestine benefit tour, and he named each of them in a long statement posted on Instagram on Friday, 6 November. The Macklemore Free Palestine tour had just played three sold out dates in Dublin, Paris and London, and the rapper said his plan from the start was to bring it home to the United States. After weeks of reaching out, he wrote, nine venues had turned him down.
The venues Macklemore named were Madison Square Garden, Prudential Center, Barclays Center and UBS Arena in the New York area, Intuit Dome, Kia Forum and Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, Chase Center in San Francisco and Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. He said his team had received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year by mid September. “But once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those dates were suddenly off the table,” he wrote.
“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,” Macklemore wrote. The Macklemore Free Palestine tour was set up to raise money for organisations that support the Palestinian people. He said he had never experienced anything like it in more than 20 years of touring.
The European leg of the Macklemore Free Palestine tour played to sold out rooms in Dublin, Paris and London last month, and the money raised went to organisations that support the Palestinian people. Macklemore said the US leg was part of the plan from the beginning, not an afterthought, and his team spent weeks contacting venues before the statement went up. The nine venues he named span both coasts, from Madison Square Garden in New York to Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, with three of them in the Los Angeles area alone. The Macklemore Free Palestine tour was meant to follow the same pattern as the European dates, with benefit shows in the biggest rooms in the country.
Macklemore Free Palestine tour and the venues reply
Madison Square Garden disputed Macklemore’s account. An MSG Entertainment spokesperson told TMZ and Reuters that its venues are among the busiest in the world, with extremely limited availability, and that Macklemore is not an arena level act. The company operates Madison Square Garden and other venues. Representatives for the Kia Forum did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to Reuters.
The dispute turns on why the dates disappeared. Macklemore said the venues withdrew them once they learned the shows would benefit Palestine. MSG said availability and the size of the act were the reasons. The other venues named by Macklemore have not publicly given detailed explanations, and the booking discussions and the reasons behind each venue’s decision have not been independently established.
Macklemore said the experience left him with no interest in protecting professional relationships over the issue. He described the refusals as intimidation, manipulation and suppression, according to reports of his statement, and he said he no longer cared about damaging his standing with the venue owners. The Macklemore Free Palestine tour is now his test of whether a benefit tour can run without the biggest rooms in the country, and his closing line made the point plain.
Macklemore Free Palestine tour and the Sheeran fallout
The Macklemore Free Palestine tour grew out of a row earlier in the year. Macklemore was removed as the opening act on Ed Sheeran’s concert tour in August, after stadium owners objected to him saying “Free Palestine” on stage. He said at the time that the owners had threatened to block him from performing if he stayed on the bill. The European dates that followed were his answer to that removal.
Macklemore closed his statement with a promise to go ahead without the arenas. “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,” he wrote. The Macklemore Free Palestine tour has no US dates announced, and the venues he named have given no sign of changing their position.