Ed Sheeran’s weekend concerts at Gillette Stadium have been cancelled due to weather, the Robert Kraft-owned venue says, as controversy continues to swirl around the tour and Kraft’s role in getting Macklemore dropped from the tour’s US dates for his onstage support of Palestine.<\/p>\n
Event organisers cancelled the concerts on Friday and Saturday night “following consultation with local officials, the promoter and tour,” citing hazardous weather warnings in place for Boston and across New England throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n
“The decision was made with the safety of fans, staff and everyone involved in the shows as the top priority,” the venue said in a statement, adding ticket refunds are available.<\/p>\n
The cancellation comes after the singer-songwriter’s tour became mired in controversy<\/a> last week over free speech and the conflict in Gaza, when Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, said he would bar Sheeran’s then-opener, Macklemore<\/a>, from performing at Gillette Stadium.<\/p>\n Early last week, Macklemore said on Instagram he’d been dropped from Sheeran’s remaining US tour dates, pointing the blame squarely at Kraft, who he said had “rallied some of the other stadium owners” and given Sheeran an ultimatum: “if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”<\/p>\n Kraft acknowledged he planned to bar Macklemore from performing at Gillette Stadium, issuing a statement citing 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.”<\/p>\n Sheeran, whose opening acts and backing band had since resigned in solidarity with Macklemore, opened his show last Saturday night in Philadelphia with an apology for his “mistakes.”<\/p>\n As an intensifying early-season nor’easter takes aim at the East Coast from the Carolinas to Maine, organisers of Maryland’s Oceans Calling festival, held in Ocean City, also chose to cancel their event. Tides, floods and high winds had prevented the setup of the three-day music festival.<\/p>\n “Following the advice of the National Weather Service and in cooperation with local public officials, we must make the difficult decision to cancel,” the event’s promoters announced Friday.<\/p>\n The Global Citizen Festival planned for Saturday in New York’s Central Park was cancelled. Organisers noted this is the first cancellation of the event in 14 years. “Safety has to come first,” their statement said, pointing to dangerous forecasted weather conditions over the weekend.<\/p>\n Also cancelled was the All Things Go Festival in Forest Hills, New York, originally scheduled to run Friday through Sunday.<\/p>\n – CNN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ed Sheeran’s weekend concerts at Gillette Stadium have been cancelled due to weather, the Robert Kraft-owned venue says,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-611792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}