Rapper names nine major U.S. venues he says pulled booking dates
November 7, 2026 · 2:30 a.m. Central / 3:30 a.m. Eastern
Grammy-winning rapper Macklemore accused nine major U.S. sports and concert arenas this week of refusing to host a domestic leg of his “Free Palestine” benefit tour, sparking a blunt public rebuttal from Madison Square Garden Entertainment over his ticket-selling draw.
In a lengthy statement posted to social media and reported by The Guardian, CBC News, and the New York Post, the Seattle artist—born Ben Haggerty—said his booking team sought to bring the benefit concert series to American arenas following recent stops in Dublin, London, and Paris. According to Macklemore, nine venues initially provided available calendar holds through the end of the year before rescinding them once operators learned the shows were benefit concerts supporting Palestinian humanitarian relief and political advocacy.
Macklemore specifically named Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center, and UBS Arena in the New York metropolitan area; Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey; Crypto.com Arena, Intuit Dome, and the Kia Forum in the Los Angeles area; Chase Center in San Francisco; and Climate Pledge Arena in his hometown of Seattle. “If your stages are off the table, we will build our own stages,” he wrote.
Madison Square Garden: ‘He’s not an arena-level act’
Madison Square Garden Entertainment—which operates both Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California—flatly rejected Macklemore’s claim that political viewpoints played any role in its booking decisions.
“We have some of the busiest venues in the world with extremely limited availability, and he’s not an arena-level act,” an MSG Entertainment spokesperson said in a statement to reporters on Friday.
Representatives for the other named venues did not immediately issue public responses detailing their booking correspondence. Concert industry analysts noted that arena holds are routinely challenged or released based on projected ticket demand, routing deposits, and competing sports schedules, though Macklemore maintained that his team was prepared to rent the buildings outright and assume the financial risk.
The dispute follows months of live-music fallout surrounding the rapper’s outspoken activism, including his removal earlier from planned appearances on Ed Sheeran’s U.S. stadium tour after controversial onstage remarks.
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