Madonna and concert promoter Live Nation are pushing back against a lawsuit from disappointed fans who lamented the late start to the launch of her Celebration Tour in Brooklyn last month.
New York City residents Michael Fellows and Jonathan Hadden accused Material Girl, Barclays Center and Live Nation of false advertising and breach of contract in a lawsuit filed in Brooklyn federal court last week, a lawsuit that Madonna and Live Nation promise to fight “vigorously.” “
“Madonna's recently completed and sold-out 2023 celebration tour in Europe received rave reviews. The shows premiered in North America at Barclays in Brooklyn as planned, with the exception of a technical problem on December 13 during sound check. “This caused a delay that was well documented in press reports at the time,” Madonna and Live Nation’s management team said in a statement to the Times on Thursday.
“We intend to defend this case vigorously,” they added.
The “Like a Virgin” and “Like a Prayer” hitmaker upset a stadium full of fans in December when she started a pivotal Celebration tour concert about an hour later than usual. The superstar kicked off the U.S. leg of her retrospective tour at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Dec. 13 around 11 p.m., several hours after the doors opened.
Fans took to social media to air their grievances for nearly three hours as they waited for the “Vogue” singer to appear. Some called her rude, others demanded refunds, and another reported that the crowd of 14,000 began chanting “b—” as the minutes passed.
The seven-time Grammy winner had been dealing with sound issues before the performance and was doing sound checks until the doors opened at 7:30 p.m., a person close to her told The Times at the time. was authorized to comment. Madonna usually takes the stage around 9:30 or 10 pm most nights after a DJ warms up the crowd. She came on stage that night around 10:50 pm and the show ended around 2 am.
Madonna, who had rescheduled the entire tour during her sudden hospitalization over the summer, did not acknowledge her tardiness during the sold-out show, but at one point asked audience members if they could hear her given the sound problems she had been having. competing with before. Otherwise, the singer was delighted to return to the city that launched her career.
Weeks later, two of those concertgoers filed a lawsuit against Madonna, the venue and the promoter.
Fellows and Hadden claimed in the lawsuit, obtained by Variety, that they “faced limited public transportation, limited ride-sharing, and/or increased public and private transportation costs” because their Dec. 13 show ended after midnight.
“Madonna had demonstrated frivolous difficulty in ensuring a complete and timely performance, and defendants were aware that any statement regarding the start time of a show constituted, at best, optimistic speculation,” the suit says.
The lawsuit also took note of the pop superstar's “long history of arriving and starting her concerts late,” adding that she also took the stage later than expected during her Dec. 14 and 16 concerts at the same venue. . That, they argued, constituted “not only a breach of her contracts,” but also “a rampant exercise in false advertising” and “negligent misrepresentation.” Because of that history, the plaintiffs are seeking class action status for the lawsuit,” Variety reported.
Madonna, who was scheduled to perform a series of concerts at the Crytpo.com Arena last October, has rebooked those shows at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on March 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
