Following Madonna in 2009 and Michael Jackson in 1993, Bruno Mars was scheduled to become the third American performer in history to play two completely sold-out shows in Tel Aviv, Israel’s 70,000-capacity HaYarkon Park on Saturday.
Last Wednesday, he performed his first show there, which lasted almost four hours overall and featured two Tel Aviv bands as openers. Live Nation Israel owns Bluestone Group, which promoted both shows.
The performance by Mars on Saturday was scheduled to be the second-to-last stop on a short world tour. The tour had already made a stop in Tbilisi, Georgia, on October 1, and it was scheduled to go on to Doha, Qatar, on October 8, in conjunction with the Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix.
However, early on Saturday, rumors started spreading about a planned terrorist strike spearheaded by Hamas that would intensify the ongoing hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, said that his nation was now “at war” with Hamas during an appearance on television later that day. Live Nation Israel announced in the afternoon that the show had been canceled. (Mars also canceled his scheduled gig in Doha the next day.)
According to a statement posted online by Bluestone Group, “Every ticket purchase for the show will receive an automatic refund to the credit card through which the purchase was made.
According to a source who spoke with Billboard, the venue is inside Tel Aviv’s 1.5 square mile Yarkon Park, which is situated along the banks of the Yarkon River. Securing it during active fighting would put concertgoers at unnecessary risk. The source also notes that the decision to cancel was made just a few hours after the attacks started that morning. Bruno Mars and his sixty-person crew arrived at Ben Gurion Airport around 2:00 p.m., and they boarded a plane to Athens.
Mars was scheduled to play in Doha from Athens; however, it has been alleged that he was unable to prepare and ship his production equipment out of Israel in time for that engagement. The Lusail International Circuit racetrack in Doha announced on Instagram on Sunday, just hours before Bruno Mars was supposed to hit the stage, that DJ Snake, a French producer and performer, would be taking Mars’ place.
The cancellation of Mars’ show is a metaphorical blow to Israel’s touring industry. Artists like Roger Waters and Brian Eno, who advocated for musicians to boycott the nation due to what they saw as its unfair treatment of the Palestinian people, publicly criticized artists for over ten years when they announced plans to perform there.
When Waters pleaded with Lana Del Rey to change her mind, she was scheduled to open the 2018 Meteor Music Festival. (Her trip was derailed by conflicting schedules.) Although she hasn’t been successful, Waters, a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is a Palestinian-led effort to isolate Israel, has also attempted to harm Radiohead, Bon Jovi, and Jennifer Lopez.
Promoters of the new generation, such as Tel Aviv-based Bluestone Group, which Live Nation acquired in 2017 as a joint venture with multiple investors, including Guy Oseary of Maverick, have attempted to raise the potential revenue artists can earn from performances in Israel while also assisting them in managing anti-Israel sentiment. Top Western performers like Imagine Dragons, Tiesto, Ozuna, Christina Aguilera, the Black Keys, and Guns N’ Roses performed in the nation in 2023.