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On September 24, Macklemore announced his Free Palestine Tour, a three-show series set to take place in October in Dublin, London, and Paris that would see all proceeds going toward organizations providing support for the Palestinian movement. Noticeably, there were no dates planned in the U.S. Today, on November 6, the rapper gave his explanation for why, claiming that 9 major U.S. arenas all turned down hosting the tour.
In a statement posted to Instagram, Macklemore called out New York City's Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center, New York's UBS Arena, New Jersey's Prudential Center, Los Angeles' Crypto.com Arena, Intuit Dome, and Kia Forum, San Francisco's Chase Center, and Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena, claiming they all declined to host the tour.
"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," his statement wrote.
In response to Macklemore's post, a representative for Madison Square Garden wrote in a statement: “We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he’s not an arena level act.” Representatives for the other venues did not immediately respond for a request for comment.
Later in his statement, Macklemore claimed that the owners of these venues see "the words Free Palestine" as a threat. "Not because they endanger anyone, but because these words challenge the systems of power they have built their fortunes on."
Macklemore added that over tens of thousands of people attended his Free Palestine tour, which sold out all three dates, and committed to adding more dates to the Free Palestine tour, noting the shows would happen outside of the U.S.
Macklemore launched the Free Palestine Tour after he was asked to leave Ed Sheeran's tour due to his pro-Palestine stance. In a statement in September, he revealed that billionaire Robert Kraft and owner of Massachusetts' Gilette Stadium pressured Sheeran to remove Macklemore from his tour, giving him an ultimatum that they would otherwise cancel the show. In response, Kaft experienced a wave of backlash, and wrote in his own statement that he would "not provide a platform for Jewish hate." Meanwhile, all of Ed Sheeran's openers dropped from his tour in solidarity.
