Shows started late and therefore impossible to follow until the end, boiling temperatures in the room, «a good part of the performance was lip-sync», arrogant attitudes: «We felt cheated»
by Rolling Stone
Photo: Kevin Mazur/WireImage for Live Nation via Getty Images
Madonna enriches her collection of causes for the American concerts of the Celebration Tour which also visited Italy in November. This time it is a class action filed in Washington DC against the pop star and the promoter Live Nation.
Three spectators, Elizabeth Halper-Asefi, Mary Conoboy and Nestor Monte, say they “felt cheated.” The show started two hours later than the scheduled 8.30pm and therefore they “had to leave the concert before the end”. The singer would have said that she “I’m sorry for the delay… no, I’m not sorry, that’s how I am, I’m always late”. The pop star would also have created discomfort by keeping the temperature of the venue too hot during the show and she would have “sang in playback for a good part of the concert”.
By behaving in this way, Madonna would have demonstrated “total and arrogant lack of respect” towards those who bought the ticket. “In essence, Madonna and Live Nation are a consumer’s worst nightmare,” the lawsuit says. All this in exchange for expensive tickets: Halper-Asefi paid $992.76 for one on the secondary ticketing site StubHub, the other two bought pairs of tickets on Ticketmaster for $537.70 and $252.44.
Normal inconveniences when going to see a diva? The three and their lawyers don’t think so and are convinced that it was a violation of consumer rights: «Ticket holders were not notified that the concerts would start much later than the advertised and printed start time on the coupon.” With the result that they waited hours for the start and had to leave early.
The point, lawyers say, is not to be forced to stay up late. The point is the damage caused by the delay to “reasonable people” who had made “commitments with the babysitter or at work, who did not see the entire concert for which they had paid because the car parks where they had left the car were closed or because the public transport no longer worked at that hour.”
Neither Madonna nor Live Nation commented. They instead responded to an earlier lawsuit over a delay at the Brooklyn live by saying the concerts went ahead as scheduled except for an issue on December 13 during a soundcheck that “caused a delay that was well documented in the press.” A previous lawsuit related to a delay during the tour of Madame X in 2019 it was archived.
Tags: Class action Madonna playback concerts nightmare consumers
