Grammy-winning singer Ed Sheeran told a Philadelphia crowd of 50,000 that friends and family walked away from him after he removed rapper Macklemore from his Loop Tour, a controversy that has now spilled into public feuds, million-dollar donations, and onstage tears.
Sheeran, 35, sat cross-legged on the stage at Lincoln Financial Field on Saturday night, September 19, and wept as he described the past week as one of the worst of his life. He told the crowd he had been urged from every direction to cancel the tour after Macklemore, 43, was dropped from the bill following a "Free Palestine" speech at an earlier show. Sheeran did not cancel. He played. And then he told the audience exactly what it had cost him.
"It happened very quickly," Sheeran said onstage. "At the same time, I had so many people telling me to cancel this tour and so many people I've known for years and years and years they're kind of backing away."
He went further, telling the crowd that the abandonment was not limited to industry contacts.
"Everyone's telling me to cancel and I'm feeling all of my friends and family and people I know abandon me."
Sheeran said he looked at ticket sales for the Philadelphia date and saw people buying, not canceling. "I look at the end of the week and I see 50,000 people who haven't abandoned me," he said.
The controversy traces back to Macklemore's "Free Palestine" speech during a Loop Tour stop. Stadium owners, including billionaire Robert Kraft, 85, who owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, through the Kraft Group, refused to let Macklemore perform at their venues after the remarks. The "Thrift Shop" rapper was dropped from the tour.
Macklemore has said Sheeran was pressured into the decision by the stadium owners. But that account is disputed, by Sheeran's own cousin.
The fallout did not stop with Macklemore's removal. All of Sheeran's opening acts and his own backing band quit the Loop Tour in solidarity with the rapper, leaving Sheeran to perform what amounted to a stripped-down show in a stadium built for spectacle.
Sheeran acknowledged as much Saturday night, telling the crowd he had removed the B stage, a secondary performance platform typically positioned in the middle of the arena floor, because he feared concertgoers might throw objects at him.
"I apologize that today is not the usual Loop show. I took the B stage out because was afraid of what might happen if I stood in the middle. And I will admit that."
Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside Lincoln Financial Field during the concert.
The public pile-on extended to Sheeran's family. On Thursday, days before the Philadelphia show, his cousin Jethro Sheeran posted a blistering attack on Instagram. Jethro, who described himself as Ed's "first blood cousin," said he was ashamed of the singer and called him a "bad human."
Jethro wrote that he believed Ed made the decision to drop Macklemore himself, calling his cousin "shady" and a "coward." He went further, accusing Ed of personal cruelty unrelated to the tour.
"He's honestly a selfish individual with malicious, cunning ways... I'm his first blood cousin and he screwed me over, made fun of my mental health and mental health in general."
Jethro also wrote: "Finally it's all coming out! I'm ashamed of my cousin Ed he's done. Finally the world and all his fans see through him." He added, "In my opinion he's a bad human. Just my opinion from my experiences."
The broader collapse of the Loop Tour has turned what began as a booking dispute into a full-blown cultural flashpoint, one that now involves competing million-dollar donations and questions about who actually controls the concert industry's relationship with political speech.
Macklemore donated $1 million to Palestinian relief efforts, what he described as all the money he made from the Loop Tour before being dropped. He then called on Robert Kraft to match the donation.
Kraft went further. He donated $2 million to Palestinian relief after Sheeran personally asked him to contribute. In a statement, Kraft said he had "dedicated his life to trying to help people come together" and believed that "all lives are worth protecting."
The dueling donations turned a backstage dispute into a public contest over who cared more about Palestinian suffering, even as the underlying question of whether Macklemore's removal was justified remained unresolved. Other celebrities have since made their own pledges to Palestinian causes, widening the pressure campaign on public figures to pick a side.
Sheeran himself has not publicly confirmed or denied whether he personally decided to remove Macklemore or whether the stadium owners forced the issue. That gap in the record has allowed both Macklemore's version, that Sheeran was pressured, and Jethro Sheeran's version, that Ed acted on his own, to circulate without direct contradiction from the singer.
Despite the tears and the stripped-down show, Sheeran framed his decision to continue performing as an act of loyalty to the fans who bought tickets. "People will say what they want, but I am doing this for you. I love you. I love this," he told the crowd Saturday night.
He called the Philadelphia concert "the best show of his life", a striking claim given the circumstances. He also offered a broader observation about the moment: "The world is a scary place right now, America is a scary place right now." Looking out at the audience, he added simply, "This gives hope."
Sheeran's next scheduled Loop Tour dates are September 25 and 26 at Gillette Stadium, the Foxborough venue owned by Kraft, one of the stadium owners whose refusal to host Macklemore triggered the entire dispute. Whether Sheeran will face the same protests, the same stripped-down format, and the same isolation at Kraft's stadium remains an open question.
The episode around the Loop Tour is part of a broader pattern of confrontations over pro-Palestinian activism spilling into public life, from concert stages to college campuses to city streets. In each case, the same dynamic plays out: political speech triggers institutional consequences, those consequences trigger a backlash, and the people caught in the middle, performers, venue workers, ordinary ticket-holders, are left to absorb the fallout.
Ed Sheeran wanted to play music for 50,000 fans. Instead he got a lesson in what happens when celebrity, geopolitics, and moral posturing collide, and the people who said they loved you decide the cause matters more than the relationship.
