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Tough Going For Hip-Hop Tour
Of the remaining 10 dates following the stabbings at the tour’s April 3 show in Boston, half were canceled.
Promoter Haymon Entertainment called Desert Sky the morning of the scheduled show and said it would not be held because of poor ticket sales, venue GM Brandon Sirochman told Pollstar.
“If it was up to us, we would have held the show,” Sirochman said. “We would have beefed up the advertising and seen if we could get the bodies in. Generally, we don’t like to cancel shows because it’s bad publicity.”
The 20,000-capacity venue had sold 4,000 tickets, he said.
One of two shows at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Southern California was also canceled. The tour’s April 15 show at the venue went on as scheduled but the April 16 date did not.
When asked to comment on the canceled show, Irvine Meadows referred Pollstar to promoter Avalon Attractions, which had not return calls at press time.
A statement released by tour organizers said the Irvine show was nixed because “the acts are exhausted” and “feel they cannot give their best performance,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
However, based on the statement, which suggested that fans redeem their canceled-show tickets for the April Ruff Ryder concert, the paper speculated that ticket sales were poor.
The four other facilities that hosted the tour after the brawl at Boston’s FleetCenter were Charlotte Coliseum in North Carolina; Philips Arena in Atlanta; KeyArena in Seattle; and Arco Arena in Sacramento. Those shows all went on without major problems.
The other venues that canceled shows were First Union Spectrum in Philadelphia, AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, and Alltel Arena in North Little Rock, Ark.
Each show on the tour featured DMX, Juvenile, Lil’ Wayne, Drag-On, Eve, The Lox, Big Tymers, and B.G.