Ed Sheeran’s fans are demanding to be refunded for their concert tickets after Macklemore was fired from the former’s stadium tour for his “Free Palestine” speech.
One fan wrote on X this week, “Hey @Ticketmaster so @edsheeran is no longer having @macklemore on his tour we purchased these tickets when @macklemore was on the setlist and we would like to cancel our tickets for a full refund please and you can sell them to someone else! Thanks :).”
Meanwhile, someone else tweeted at X’s AI Chatbot, Grok, and asked, “Will Ticketmaster give me a refund for my Ed Sheeran tickets since all of his other opening acts dropped out in solidarity with Macklemore […]?”
Another X account tagged Ticketmaster and asked the company, “[…] Are you also offering refunds for people who don’t want to go to a concert where an artist was kicked off a tour for speaking their mind?
“Because it’s only fair. But my guess is that you’re not gonna do that, huh?” the account added.
A fourth user called on anyone who has tickets to Sheeran’s shows to ask for their money back.
Meanwhile, another account said that instead of asking for a refund, Sheeran’s fans with tickets already “should simply not go” to the tour.
“Empty seats will impact his tour a lot more than resold tickets,” the tweet read. “It’ll affect merch sales and venue profits too. Keep the tickets, don’t attend.”
A different account claimed there’s been “a surge” in Sheeran’s tickets being put up for resale after Macklemore’s removal.
Page Six has reached out to Sheeran’s rep and Ticketmaster for comment.
Macklemore, 43, was dropped from Sheeran’s The Loop Tour after several venues notified the tour’s promoter that they would not allow him to perform after he yelled “Free Palestine” onstage at a recent show in New Jersey.
In a lengthy post on Monday, Macklemore placed responsibility on Sheeran, writing that “Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from The Loop tour.”
The “Thrift Shop” rapper said he considers Sheeran “a brother,” but the pair “had some difficult conversations this past week.”
Macklemore claimed that Sheeran, 35, told him that billionaire Robert Kraft called him and said he would “not be allowed” to perform at Gillette Stadium later this month. He further claimed that Sheeran told him that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the Palestinian flag “were hurtful to a lot of people he spoke with.”
“I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood,” he alleged. “But he couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides.’”
Sheeran, for his part, claimed in a post on Tuesday that Macklemore’s firing “was the promoter’s decision, not mine.”
The “Thinking Out Loud” singer said that because of “how Macklemore conveyed part of his message during his performance” at their NJ shows, Sheeran learned from venues that future shows would be pulled if Macklemore wasn’t dropped.
Sheeran insisted he tried to “build a bridge” between the two sides — including by talking to Kraft, 85 — but was ultimately unsuccessful.
“Macklemore’s contract for the tour was with the promoter, not me,” Sheeran wrote. “I would never let down the fans who had made plans, nor would I abandon the touring crew and the other support acts and musicians who rely on me for work and to make a living.”
Kraft said in a statement to Page Six that Macklemore was banned from performing at Gillette Stadium because the venue doesn’t “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 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line,” Kraft stated.
Following Sheeran’s statement on Tuesday, his opening acts Finneas, Lukas Graham, Aaron Rowe and Beoga all dropped out of the tour in support of Macklemore.
Sheeran has ten shows remaining on the North American leg of his tour, which wraps up in December.
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