Macklemore, Ed Sheeran and Robert Kraft Pledge $5 Million After Tour Rift Over Gaza Remarks

Ed Sheeran's stadium tour, already reeling from a lineup shake-up over rapper Macklemore's onstage remarks about Gaza, took a new turn this week as two of the men at the center of the dispute answered it with money instead of statements. Macklemore said he would give away his entire tour paycheck to Palestinian aid groups, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who had pushed to keep the rapper off his stage, pledged to match it.

The donations, announced within hours of each other on Wednesday, followed a week in which Macklemore was removed as an opening act on Sheeran's Loop Tour after telling crowds at MetLife Stadium to "free Palestine" and performing his protest song "Hind's Hall," and in which four other supporting acts quit the tour in solidarity. What began as a booking dispute over a few minutes of concert banter has become a referendum on how far artists can go in using a stadium stage for political speech, and on who ultimately controls that stage.

The Numbers

Macklemore said on his official social media account that he would donate the full $1 million of his net earnings from his run as Sheeran's opening act, splitting it among six organizations: the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, HEAL Palestine, Gaza Soup Kitchen, Medical Aid for Palestinians, the UNRWA USA National Committee and Anera, according to NBC News. He then invited Kraft to match it.

Kraft answered the same day, pledging $2 million of his own, though he framed it as a commitment made earlier and separately: Sheeran, he said, had already called him that morning to ask him to match a $2 million donation Sheeran himself was making "to aid in the region to fight this humanitarian crisis," as Kraft put it in a statement carried by Deadline. Combined, the three pledges total $5 million, none of it yet tied to a public accounting of how or when the money will reach the named groups.

The dispute traces to two shows at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on Sept. 4 and 5, where Macklemore used his opening set to call for a "free Palestine" and perform "Hind's Hall," a song named for the Columbia University building occupied during 2024 campus protests. Messina Touring Group, the promoter of Sheeran's U.S. dates, announced on Monday that Macklemore would not perform the tour's remaining stops, saying in a statement that venues had warned they "will not allow a concert to take place with Macklemore on the lineup," which would have forced the cancellation of the tour's remaining shows.

How the Dispute Unfolded

Macklemore has said Kraft, who owns Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, and founded an organization that funds anti-antisemitism advertising, told Sheeran he would not permit the rapper to perform there and then rallied owners of other stadiums on the tour to threaten pulling their shows too. Kraft has said his objection was to what he characterized as Macklemore's "broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery," concluding that letting him perform at Gillette would mean "providing a platform for hate speech," a rationale Variety reported in detail this week.

Sheeran addressed the fallout in a statement posted to Instagram on Tuesday, saying the decision was the promoter's and the venues', not his own. "Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter's decision, it was not mine," he wrote, according to Rolling Stone, adding that he had spent the week "trying to build bridges" between the venues and Macklemore's camp without success. He said he does not use his platform for politics because his audience includes children of "all backgrounds," and that his shows are not meant to be "a political forum."

A Tour in Flux

The statement did not settle the matter. Hours after it was posted, four of Sheeran's other supporting acts — singer-songwriter Finneas, the Irish folk group Beoga, singer Aaron Rowe and the Danish band Lukas Graham — announced on social media that they were withdrawing from the remaining tour dates in protest, according to NPR. Their exits leave Sheeran's next two stops effectively without opening acts: neither the singer's own tour listings nor Gillette Stadium's event page for its Sept. 25 and 26 dates currently names any support act, a marked change from how the North American leg of the Loop Tour, in support of Sheeran's album "Play," was originally booked.

The affected parties extend beyond the performers. Fans who bought tickets expecting a full bill now face shows built around Sheeran alone. Venue operators along the remaining route, including Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where Sheeran is booked for Saturday, are contending with a controversy that has drawn commentary from lawmakers and advocacy groups on both sides of the underlying conflict, even though none of them had a hand in the original booking decision.

"Whatever we disagree about, perhaps we can agree on this: Palestinian lives are worth protecting."

That line, from Macklemore's donation announcement, was aimed squarely at Kraft, and it appears to have worked as intended: Kraft's statement, while defending his original decision, struck a markedly more conciliatory tone than his earlier remarks about "hate speech," describing decades of what he called his own efforts "to build bridges between all people" and stating plainly, "I believe deeply that all lives are worth protecting."

What Comes Next

Sheeran is scheduled to play Philadelphia on Saturday and then Gillette Stadium, the venue at the center of the dispute, the following weekend, both without a supporting act as things stand. Kraft's statement suggested he intends to reach out to other venue owners on the tour "to continue to work together," language that leaves open whether any accommodation could still be found for Macklemore later on the schedule, though nothing in the statements from either camp indicates the rapper's removal is being reconsidered.

For now, the money is the most concrete outcome of a week defined mostly by public statements. None of the three pledges has been accompanied by a timeline for disbursement, and the aid organizations named have not yet issued public responses to the specific gifts. Sheeran, notably, has not detailed his own $2 million commitment beyond Kraft's reference to it, leaving the singer's most direct financial response to a controversy that has cost him half his supporting lineup still undescribed in his own words.