{"id":677428,"date":"2026-11-07T05:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677428\/"},"modified":"2026-11-07T05:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-07T05:40:10","slug":"msg-says-macklemore-is-not-an-arena-level-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/677428\/","title":{"rendered":"MSG Says Macklemore Is ‘Not an Arena Level Act’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA spokesperson for Madison Square Garden has responded after Macklemore<\/a> called out the arena for allegedly blocking him from performing there on his Free Palestine Tour.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement shared with Billboard, the spokesperson simply said Friday (Nov. 6), \u201cWe have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability and he\u2019s not an arena level act.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBillboard has reached out to Macklemore\u2019s reps for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarlier in the day, the rapper had named<\/a> MSG and eight other arenas \u2014 Prudential Center, Barclays Center, UBS Arena, Intuit Dome, Kia Forum, Crypto.com Arena, Chase Center and Climate Pledge Arena \u2014 in a statement claiming he was not welcome at the venues due to his tour\u2019s message and purpose. \u201cFrom the beginning, our plan was to bring this tour home to the U.S,\u201d he wrote following his Free Palestine shows in Dublin, Paris and London. \u201cBut after weeks of reaching out, nine major American arenas have turned us down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBy mid-September, we received available dates at these arenas through the end of the year,\u201d he continued. \u201cBut once they found out these were my benefit shows for Palestine, those 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added that he\u2019d \u201crather lose every opportunity in this industry than spend another day protecting people who value their business relationships with Israel more than they value Palestinian human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite the MSG spokesperson\u2019s claim, Macklemore\u2019s previous three Free Palestine shows all took place in arenas: 3Arena in Dublin, Accor Arena in Paris and the OVO Arena Wembley in London. Each performance sold out immediately<\/a>, according to the musician, and each drew thousands of fans and featured guest performances from Hozier, Kneecap and AURORA. <\/p>\n

\n\tThis latest development follows Macklemore\u2019s previous conflict <\/a>with Robert Kraft \u2014 whose Kraft Group owns Gillette Stadium \u2014 and other American stadium owners who allegedly banded together to pressure Ed Sheeran\u2019s promoter into dropping the rapper from the Loop Tour supporting lineup. During his first two performances opening for Sheeran, Macklemore had incorporated \u201cFree Palestine\u201d demonstrations into his act.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the aftermath of his dismissal from the Loop trek, the \u201cThrift Shop\u201d artist announced his Free Palestine trek and donated $1 million to humanitarian aid for Gaza.<\/p>\n

\n\tUPDATE: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis had headlined Madison Square Garden in 2013, but that show was at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, not the arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A spokesperson for Madison Square Garden has responded after Macklemore called out the arena for allegedly blocking him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278,633,100885,1650],"class_list":["post-677428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-music-news","tag-nsfs","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}