Ed Sheeran's Stadium Tour Lost Every Opening Act in One Day, and the Apology Never Said What It Was For

This column takes no side on the war that set this off. The subject is narrower and easier to check: how one of the biggest stadium tours in the world managed to lose its entire support bill in a matter of days, and why the headliner’s own words are a large part of the reason.

The facts, per Billboard’s timeline and Rolling Stone’s reporting: Macklemore opened Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4 and 5. At the first show he played his protest song “Hind’s Hall” and told the crowd he wanted to “stand up in stadiums like this and say two words that are very near and dear to my heart: Free Palestine.” On Monday, September 14, promoter Messina Touring Group said venues on the upcoming dates “will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup, which would result in the cancellation of the tour,” and that he would not play the remaining support dates. Macklemore had been booked for eight of the ten remaining U.S. concerts, according to Rolling Stone. His own account was that Sheeran told him Gillette Stadium owner Robert Kraft had refused to host him and had rallied other owners into an ultimatum. Kraft’s statement confirmed he objected to Macklemore’s appearance, citing “material shared from the stage” and what he called “a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery.”

Then came the part that is entirely Sheeran’s. On September 15 he posted a statement saying the decision was not his, and that “the venue’s and promoter’s decision was final.” Elsewhere in the same statement he wrote that he had agreed to Macklemore joining the tour and that “as with all my support acts, I agree that they play a setlist of their choosing.” Read together, those two sentences describe a headliner who granted his openers creative freedom and then found out that the venues held a veto he had not planned around. Within hours, Finneas, Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe and the Irish band Beoga, who played a six-song mini-set during Loop shows, all announced they were leaving. The Israeli-American Council, which had petitioned for Macklemore’s removal, still criticized Sheeran, saying that when it came time to take responsibility for his own stage, “he chose to emphasize that the decision to drop Macklemore wasn’t his.” Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio pulled his catalogue from its playlist on September 17, though its programme director said the move was “not intended as a personal judgment.”

The September 19 show at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia was supposed to be the recovery. Instead it started at 8 p.m. rather than the scheduled 5:30, with no openers, and Sheeran began with a prewritten speech. “I’ve had to take and make difficult decisions, and I am making mistakes, and I’m so, so sorry,” he told the crowd, and later said “I am deeply worried about the idea that venues preapprove content and performers.” He also addressed his own position, calling the latter “horrific” and the former “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” per PhillyVoice’s account. But as IBTimes UK pointed out, he never specified which decisions he considered mistakes, and the apology stopped short of saying that removing Macklemore was one of them.

That is what makes this week’s pick a genuine disaster and not just a bad news cycle. Sheeran’s stated design for these shows, in his own words, is “unity, joy, escapism, love and a place for everyone to feel welcome.” He ended the week with no openers, one Irish radio station pulling his songs, criticism from the petitioners and the artist they targeted alike, and an apology that was a placeholder rather than a position. Each of those failures traces to the same source: saying “not mine” on Tuesday and “I am making mistakes” on Saturday, without ever saying what he would do differently. A tour built on being everyone’s neutral ground found out that in a week like this one, neutral is not a place to stand.

Hero image: “Play” album cover art, Atlantic Records UK. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.