Macklemore pledged $1 million of his net earnings from Ed Sheeran’s Loop Tour to Palestinian aid groups on Sept. 17, a week and a half after stadium owners forced Sheeran’s promoter to pull him from the tour over onstage “Free Palestine” remarks. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft matched the donation with $2 million of his own within 48 hours, and four of Sheeran’s remaining opening acts have now quit the tour in protest.
The dispute began Sept. 4 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, when
Macklemore opened for Sheeran and introduced his song “Hind’s Hall” by telling the crowd he wanted people from Gaza to the West Bank “to know that we have not forgotten them.” He said “Free Palestine, free Cuba, the Congo, Sudan and Iran” and called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a “terror organization” as footage from Gaza played on the stadium screens behind him.
Some attendees booed and walked out, while others cheered.
The Israeli-American Council launched a petition within two days demanding Sheeran remove Macklemore from the tour, accusing him of using another artist’s platform “to push a one-sided political message.” Macklemore responded in a video posted Sept. 7, saying wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial.
Kraft, whose stadium hosted the opening shows, began pushing fellow NFL stadium owners to deny Macklemore access to their venues for the remainder of the tour. Sheeran addressed the fallout in an Instagram statement distancing himself from the decision, saying the call to drop Macklemore came from venue owners rather than from him or his tour.
Four of Sheeran’s other opening acts quit the tour ahead of a planned Philadelphia stop in solidarity with Macklemore: singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe; Lukas Forchhammer of Lukas Graham; Finneas, the producer and musician who is Billie Eilish’s brother; and the Irish folk group Beoga. Each cited discomfort performing on a tour that had pushed out an artist for speaking about Palestinian civilians.
Not every musician sided with Macklemore.
Pop singer P!nk criticized his approach in a Sept. 11 statement, and Culture Club’s Boy George also spoke out against using a headliner’s stage for one-sided political messaging.
Macklemore announced the $1 million pledge Sept. 17, splitting the money across six aid organizations working in Gaza and the West Bank. He said the donation was meant to help meet basic humanitarian needs for families displaced by the war.
Kraft responded the same day, noting he had already matched a separate $2 million donation Sheeran made earlier in the tour to humanitarian causes, and he said he was open to meeting with Macklemore directly to discuss the dispute.
The controversy has dented ticket demand in Philadelphia, where resale prices fell 24% compared with the tour’s earlier stops, according to data from TicketData reported by TMZ. The Philadelphia Coalition for Palestine has also planned a protest near Lincoln Financial Field ahead of Sheeran’s show there.
The resale slide extends well beyond Philadelphia.
Nine of Sheeran’s 10 upcoming North American dates saw immediate resale price drops after the controversy broke, according to Digital Music News, which reported that upper-level seats listed at $125 on Ticketmaster were reselling on StubHub for as little as $65. Ticketmaster responded by rolling out a buy-one-getone-free promotion in select cities, an unusual discount for a stadium tour of Sheeran’s size and a sign of how much the fallout has cooled demand for a run that followed his record-setting Mathematics Tour.
A Recurring Cause for Macklemore
Macklemore’s MetLife remarks were not a one-off. He has become one of the most visible pro-
Palestinian voices in mainstream American music since the war in Gaza began, releasing “Hind’s Hall” in May 2024 as a tribute to student protesters who occupied a building at
Columbia University and renamed it after a six-year-old girl killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza.
The song accused Israel of “genocide” and criticized then-President Joe Biden’s support for the war, and it reached number one on Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart within days of its release, according to Rolling Stone. Macklemore has performed “Hind’s Hall” at pro-Palestinian rallies in Washington and released a sequel track the following year, cementing his reputation as one of the industry’s most outspoken advocates on the issue. Kraft’s Broader Campaign
Kraft’s push to keep Macklemore off NFL stadium stages fits a pattern for the billionaire owner, who founded the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019 after a series of high-profile attacks on Jewish communities. The foundation runs the “Stand Up to Jewish Hate” campaign, which has aired national television ads and, by Kraft’s own account, moved the share of people willing to confront antisemitic remarks from 20% to 40% in surveys the foundation commissioned.
Kraft pledged $200 million to the foundation in December 2023, matching a $100 million gift from the Norman R. Rales Foundation, and he has said the money is meant to sustain the campaign for at least two decades.
The pressure on Macklemore reportedly began earlier than his removal suggests. According to a Wall Street Journal report cited by TMZ, owners of the Carolina Panthers, Atlanta Falcons and Philadelphia Eagles complained to Sheeran’s team after the first MetLife show and were told Macklemore would drop the Palestine references for the second night.
When he repeated them anyway, those owners joined Kraft in pressing for his removal from the remaining stadium dates, though it remains unclear who at the tour or promoter level made that assurance to the owners in the first place.
Sheeran’s Loop Tour is one of the largest of his career, spanning 59 shows across Oceania, Latin
America and North America between January and December 2026 in support of his album “Play.” The tour had grossed nearly $99 million and drawn more than 754,000 fans across its first 17 completed shows before the Macklemore dispute began, underscoring how much attention has followed the fallout on a tour of that scale.
