Stadium Owners Pulled Macklemore Off Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour

Messina Touring Group pulled Macklemore from the rest of Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour on Sept. 14 after stadium venues said they would not host him. The Seattle rapper had opened two MetLife Stadium nights with “Free Palestine,” his protest song “Hind’s Hall,” and Gaza footage on the house screens. Robert Kraft, who owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, then confirmed he would not let Macklemore play Foxborough.

Sheeran has not commented. The remaining U.S. stadium dates still go on, just without the opener who said he took the job to say those two words in rooms that large.

Two Nights at MetLife Stadium

Macklemore opened for Sheeran on Sept. 4 and 5 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, a building with room for more than 80,000 people. He wore a keffiyeh, called ICE a “terror organization,” and tied Gaza to Cuba, Congo, Sudan, and Iran before playing “Hind’s Hall,” the May 6, 2024 track named for the Columbia hall that student protesters retitled after six-year-old Hind Rajab.

He also told the crowd why he wanted the gig at all.

A big part of the reason why I wanted to do this tour in the first place is so I could stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine. I said, Free Palestine! I want those words to be loud and clear, so that people all the way in Gaza to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten about them.

Macklemore, onstage at MetLife Stadium, Sept. 4, 2026

On the second night he told Jewish fans that criticism of Israel, apartheid, and “genocide” was not a criticism of them, and that his message was “peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect, and equality.” Israeli concertgoers told Hebrew-language media the cheers felt like a knife, and some left before Sheeran. StopAntisemitism called the set an ambush. The Israeli-American Council, which says it speaks for more than 150,000 Israeli-Americans, put up a petition calling for Macklemore’s removal and said an opening act had turned a pop bill into a one-sided political rally.

Macklemore had been saying versions of this on his own stages for almost three years. The difference at MetLife was the room, the screens, and the headliner standing in the wings.

Stadium Owners Closed the Remaining Dates

Messina Touring Group, the U.S. promoter for the Loop Tour and part of AEG, did not describe a fan boycott or a Sheeran edict. It described landlords.

“As the concert promoter for Ed Sheeran’s U.S. Loop Tour, we have been notified by venues on the upcoming U.S. tour dates that they will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour and impact hundreds of thousands of fans,” the company said. “After discussions with stakeholders, Macklemore will not be performing on the remaining support dates.”

That is the mechanism. An opener can be deleted so the headliner still walks out. Sheeran’s typical public line, in Macklemore’s telling, was that he does not take sides. Dropping the support act let the buildings keep the sold-out nights and let Sheeran keep his silence. The people with the keys were the ones who moved.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The MetLife sets: Macklemore opened Sept. 4 and 5, said “Free Palestine,” and played “Hind’s Hall” with Gaza images on the screens.
• The promoter: Messina said venues on upcoming U.S. dates would not allow a show with Macklemore on the bill, which would have cancelled the tour.
• Gillette Stadium: Kraft confirmed Macklemore was barred from the Sept. 25 and 26 Foxborough shows.
• Tampa: The Tampa Sports Authority confirmed he will not perform at Raymond James Stadium, and said the concert itself still goes ahead.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• A coordinated owner rally: Macklemore said Sheeran told him Kraft had lined up other stadium owners for a group ultimatum. Kraft has not addressed that claim.
• Named objectors beyond two buildings: Other remaining stadiums have not issued public statements matching Tampa’s or Kraft’s.
• Sheeran’s own account: His representatives have not answered questions about the calls Macklemore described.

The argument on X after Variety posted the letter split in a blunt way. One camp called Sheeran spineless for hiding behind neutrality. Another noted that cutting the opener is already taking a side, just the side that keeps the stadium lights on. Both read the same fact: the support slot is the part of a stadium bill a landlord can remove without refunding the headliner.

Gillette Stadium Drew the Hard Line

Macklemore’s Sept. 14 Instagram letter said the break started the previous Monday, Sept. 7, while Pink’s criticism of the MetLife set was still spreading. He wrote that Sheeran told him Kraft had called, that Macklemore “would not be allowed to perform in his stadium,” and that other owners had joined an ultimatum: keep Macklemore and lose the buildings.

Kraft confirmed the Gillette half of that story and ignored the rest. He framed the bar as a house rule, not a tour-wide campaign.

Gillette Stadium has a longstanding commitment to providing a welcoming environment for all guests and ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech. Based on Macklemore’s recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran’s shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25 and 26 concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line.

Robert Kraft, owner, Gillette Stadium and the New England Patriots

He added that Palestinian pain is real, that Hamas is a designated terrorist organization, and that “only sharing selective information and ignoring the actions of Hamas is not honest.” He said he has spent years sending resources and sports programs toward Palestinians, and that standing with Palestinians and standing against Hamas “should not be mutually exclusive.” He offered to sit down with Macklemore. He did not say he had called Atlanta, Dallas, or Tampa.

Foxborough is not a neutral warehouse in this fight. Kraft founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 after taking Israel’s Genesis Prize, starting with $20 million of his own and, on the foundation’s own about page, growing that effort to more than $150 million. The group later rolled into the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate and still lists a command center that watches online speech about Jewish hate. When Kraft says a rapper’s stage images “cross that line” at Gillette, he is speaking as the landlord and as the man who built an antisemitism shop next to the same parking lots.

The venue’s own concert rules already treat message as a gatekeeping issue. The Loop Tour event guide says management “reserves the right to prohibit signs or banners due to message content.” A keffiyeh and a Gaza reel on the video wall are a louder version of the same fight over what a football stadium will display.

Eight Shows Sat Behind a Venue Veto

Macklemore was booked for eight of the 10 remaining U.S. shows when Messina cut him. The two nights he was never on were Oct. 29 and 30 at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida. The eight that vanished are all NFL stadiums. Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe stay on the bill, including the September 25 and 26 concerts at Gillette Stadium, which the venue now lists with those two names and no Macklemore.

THE REMAINING U.S. STADIUM DATES

The Loop Tour itself began Jan. 16 in Auckland for Sheeran’s 2025 album Play and is due to finish Dec. 12 in Mexico City. The U.S. stadium run still wraps Nov. 7 in Tampa. Only the support name changed.

Why Public Stadiums Complicate the Veto

Most of the remaining buildings are not private clubs. Gillette Stadium and Bank of America Stadium are the privately held pair on that list. Lincoln Financial Field is owned by the City of Philadelphia and run by the Eagles. Mercedes-Benz Stadium sits with the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. Lucas Oil Stadium sits with an Indiana public authority. AT&T Stadium sits with the City of Arlington. Raymond James Stadium sits with Hillsborough County and the Tampa Sports Authority.

WHO HOLDS THE KEYS

• Private: Gillette Stadium (Kraft Group) and Bank of America Stadium (Panthers Stadium LLC).
• City or state: Lincoln Financial Field, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, AT&T Stadium, and Raymond James Stadium.
• The one on-record public board: Tampa Sports Authority said Macklemore is off the Nov. 7 show and the concert still happens.

That split is not a slogan. A private owner can refuse a support act as a house policy. A county-owned stadium that bars a performer over political speech walks closer to a First Amendment fight, which is why Raymond James already had a live test this summer. Kanye West’s dates there drew calls to cancel over his antisemitic record. The shows went on, with a contract clause that blocked cancellation over past statements, and lawyers arguing that a public board dumping a booked act for viewpoint would be the government restricting speech.

Macklemore is not West, and an opener is easier to swap than a headliner. The Tampa board still chose the quiet version of the same move: confirm the lineup change, keep the Sheeran night, say nothing about the Constitution. Other public landlords have so far said even less. The legal risk, if it exists, sits with those buildings, not with Sheeran’s dressing room.

Pink Refused to Call for a Firing

The celebrity layer of this fight is thinner than the venue layer, and it does not line up the way a free-speech rally poster would. Pink, who is Jewish, first amplified a StopAntisemitism post about the MetLife set. After a week of backlash she wrote in her own words. She said Hamas is a terrorist group, that Palestinians deserve a future, and that she would not “litigate a complex war in an Instagram caption.”

She also said she was not asking for Macklemore to lose the job. “I have never asked for another artist to be silenced and I’m not asking now. I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund.” What she wanted, she wrote, was room as a Jewish mother to say the stadium images scared her and people she loves, “without being told our fear is just propaganda.” She pointed back to an old “Thrift Shop” bit she read as a Jewish caricature, said he had apologized, and said last weekend’s screens and speech told Jews in the building that the night was not about them. “You don’t get to decide that for us.”

Macklemore named her in his letter anyway, in a sentence that put the three of them on the same side of a comfort line. “I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families. The victims are the Palestinian people.” He put a figure in that same letter that is his, not a court finding: “More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone.”

After the drop, the children’s educator Rachel Anne Accurso, who works as Ms. Rachel, went at Sheeran directly. “Ed Sheeran had an opportunity [to] show that we won’t be bullied into punishing people for supporting Palestine,” she wrote. “Instead he caved to people who refuse to accept what the world knows.” She called silence during a genocide not neutral. Boy George had already criticized the MetLife remarks. Sheeran still has not answered any of them.

The people who actually ended the booking were not on that group chat. They run football buildings.

Friday in Philadelphia Without the Opener

Macklemore has known Sheeran for 13 years, called him a brother, and said the phone calls of the past week were “rooted in love and respect” and still ended in “fundamental disagreement.” He said Sheeran told him “Free Palestine” and the Palestinian flag were hurtful to people he had spoken with. Macklemore’s reply, as he wrote it, was that if those words offended more than “tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel,” the gap was too wide. He also said taking a side can cost “money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access,” and that he has already lost those.

He did not sound surprised to lose these dates. He sounded as if two nights had been the product.

“I didn’t need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say. Free Palestine. But if those words cost me the stage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I’ve ever been on.”

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That math is why the hidden stakeholders matter more than a Hollywood pile-on that has not arrived. Macklemore got the MetLife screens. Kraft got Macklemore out of Gillette. Messina got a tour that can still play. Sheeran got to say nothing. The Loop Tour resumes Sept. 19 at Lincoln Financial Field with Lukas Graham and Aaron Rowe, and the man who used the support slot as a Gaza brief will not be on the ramp.