Blue Dot Fever: Why are so many artists cancelling tours?

Then, over the weekend, Post Malone axed the first three weeks of his huge stadium tour with Jelly Roll, which was due to start on May 13th.

In his explanation, Post Malone, who last released an album in 2024 and also performed a stadium tour last summer, told fans, “I promised y’all beautifbul people new music, and I don’t have the time to finish it before tour starts. We ain’t ready for tour just yet, so I’m making the decision to push the tour back about three weeks to get this music done.”

While the tour will now not begin until June 9th at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, he will still headline two festivals later this month.

Meanwhile, The Pussycat Dolls, who enjoyed much more success in the UK and Europe than in the United States, cancelled the entirety of their North American headline arena tour on May 4th. However, their UK and Europe shows will still go ahead.

Although they didn’t directly mention ticket sales, the girl group frankly admitted in a refreshing statement, “After taking an honest look at the North American run, we’ve made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to cancel all but one of the North America dates.”

Just weeks earlier, Meghan Trainor also axed a North American arena tour, due to begin in June, citing family reasons after giving birth to her third child in January, telling fans, “I need to be home and present for each and all of them at this time.”

Even former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar isn’t immune. His first UK tour in 30 years was supposed to see him perform at London’s 20,000-capacity O2 Arena, which he has now swapped for three nights at the considerably smaller British Airways ARC, which fits 3,800.

He also substituted the 21,000-capacity AO Arena in Manchester for the 3,500-capacity O2 Apollo. In his statement, Hagar said the downsizing was due to his recent Las Vegas residency reminding him that a “more intimate size really lets us connect with the audiences”, with no mention of ticket sales.

The New York Post cited an industry source who placed these cancellations down to blue dot fever, referring to the blue empty seats on Ticketmaster, which they described as “contagious”.

Although no artist has outright said that ticket sales caused the cancellations, attending a vast number of arena and stadium shows each year simply isn’t viable for the average concertgoer in this current climate, which is no slight at the artists that may have been caught in the crossfire.

What could be causing Blue Dot Fever?

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, it felt like stadiums and arenas were reserved for a very select few. While some may scale up to the 10,000-capacity Wembley Arena or Alexandra Palace in London, venues like The O2 were off-limits unless you were part of that exclusive club.

Then, after the pandemic, fans who had spent 18 months cooped up watching festival footage on YouTube were desperate for live music. For many artists, this meant that no venue appeared to be off limits, and suddenly, playing arenas seemed to be accessible for more acts than ever before.

However, that collective ‘Fuck it, I’ll worry about how much it costs tomorrow’ attitude has eventually worn off. People’s purses are tighter than ever, with the cost-of-living crisis showing no signs of slowing down while wages stagnate, which is making arena shows an unaffordable luxury for many.

It’s not only the £100 or more it costs for entering the show, but the transport, accommodation fees, as well as money on food and drink, that can total to a small fortune. Therefore, many have no choice but to sit out on many tours that they’d like to attend in a dream world.

Is the UK struggling like the US?

Speaking to Far Out, Joe Gill from British live music promoters Liift Live, paints a different picture, explaining that the UK market, overall, is actually in a healthy position, compared with the US, especially when it comes to festivals.

“I don’t think the UK market is in the same boat this year when it comes to the stadium and big outdoor shows, from what I’m privy to. Most that I know seem to be in a good place. In terms of big ones, it’s only some year one festivals, which is to be expected,” Gill says.

However, Gill does admit that while big shows are selling well, that doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the entire live music landscape, admitting, “It’s a bit bleaker further down into the smaller level stuff.”

Seemingly, in the UK, at least, it’s smaller, independent festivals that are bearing the brunt of fans picking and choosing what events to attend, rather than the bankable, stadium-filling acts.

Meanwhile, Nick Briski, a spokesperson for the face-value ticket exchange Twickets, confidently said of the current state of things, “As far as Twickets is concerned, the demand for large-scale arena and stadium shows in the UK is still very strong.”

The UK is also a completely different marketplace from the US. Due to being of a much smaller size with easy transportation links, promoters can also take fewer risks instead of making their way from state to state.

Briski explains, “It would not be a surprise if some cancellations are due to tickets not selling as well as originally planned, however, in the UK, the major artists arranging arena or stadium shows tend to announce a smaller number of shows at first and then add rollout dates later on if sales are going well.”

In the case of Twickets, they are “seeing strong annual growth in the total number of tickets being listed for resale”, suggesting that more and more are opting to leave it to the last-minute in the hope of avoiding the Ticketmaster rush.

However, Briski does caveat this by noting “it is likely that most people who particularly want to see a certain show would still attempt” the general sale.

While Briski concedes “there have been a much larger number” of concert cancellations following the pandemic, he believes this is also down to “the increasing age of touring artists compared to 20-30 years ago,” rather than simply a lack of ticket sales.

Exceptions to the rule

According to Briski, while fans should be able to snag a face-value ticket on Twickets in the build-up to most major tours, there are “generational tours” that are exceptions to the rule.

These are tours that people will give their right arm to attend, like the Oasis reunion in 2025 or Taylor Swift in 2024, which could have likely seen both artists play shows at Wembley Stadium for an entire month without a single blue dot appearing on Ticketmaster.

In the case of these tours, Briski says, “Those who managed to get hold of tickets on primary sale are either reluctant to sell them at all, or would be looking to resell at an inflated price on a different site or privately.”

Similarly, Radiohead’s winter tour in 2025, their first run of shows in close to a decade, was too tempting to refuse, and also gave fans an opportunity for a winter city break in either Bologna, Madrid, London, Copenhagen or Berlin.

However, the cost of a city break to Copenhagen, soundtracked by Radiohead, doesn’t come cheap, and that Wednesday night concert in March at the AO Arena in Manchester to see a band you saw at a festival last summer gets sacrificed.

This summer, it’s Harry Styles who is taking over Wembley Stadium for ten shows, which will see fans flock from all across Europe to London to see him perform. Notably, Styles has chosen residencies rather than a traditional tour and will only perform in London and Amsterdam in Europe.

Despite his popularity, his concerts at the Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam still have many tickets available on Ticketmaster, mainly through their Verified Resale option. Although he’s among the biggest stars in the world, hotel prices in Amsterdam can be extortionate, and many who bought tickets months ago now appear to be having second thoughts as the date draws nearer.

While there will always be artists who exist in this untouchable category, it’s very much for the top percentile of artists, and if the cost of attending Oasis at Wembley means not attending another show all year, that’s a price that many fans are willing to pay.

Is Blue Dot Fever only impacting music?

Blue Dot Fever is not exclusive to music and has even extended to sports.

Last month, after almost 18 months away from the ring, Tyson Fury fought on British soil for the first time since 2022, but despite his star status in combat sports, it wasn’t enough to cause fans to rush out to pay full price for tickets to his bout against Arslenbek Makhmudov at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

Per The Telegraph, tickets had dropped to just £19 in the weeks leading up to the match, which was considerably less than the cheapest face-value ticket was when it originally went on sale.

In reality, it was a case of picking a venue too big, and the demand wasn’t there. It was a warm-up fight for Fury with nothing on the line, and should have been at The O2 instead of the 60,000-capacity Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, a venue to be saved for the biggest of bouts.

Has Blue Dot Fever been overstated?

As much as there have been a number of cancellations of high-profile tours or venues being downsized, 2026 is not the first time in history when artists have been forced to do this after miscalculating the level of demand. It’s just now, we can go on Ticketmaster and put the blue dots together to work out the likely reason as to why.

While the post-pandemic concert boom undoubtedly temporarily led to some O2 Academy-level acts graduating to arenas, and arena-level acts reaching for stadiums, everything has a way of levelling itself out.

Music fans still want to attend big shows and festivals. Even if their head says they can’t afford it, many will still sacrifice other areas of their life in order to find the finances to attend if it feels truly unmissable.

However, if an artist tours every year and is overexposed, fans know they can sit out this tour as another opportunity to see them is just around the corner.

Streaming numbers could also be a contributing factor. An artist may have 60million unique monthly listeners thanks to inclusions on popular playlists, which doesn’t correlate to selling out arenas across the world when tickets alone are £100.

Live music is a multi-billion industry, but it still requires educated guesswork and gambles, whether this be venue sizes or the price of tickets. Now, it’s just more visible than ever when these mistakes happen, and audiences have become wise to reading between the lines of carefully-worded statements.

The live music industry isn’t dying; some artists just aren’t as popular as metrics have made them believe.

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