Several Lil Baby concerts on his It’s Only Us Tour have been canceled and fans are upset.
via: Complex
Lil Baby’s highly anticipated It’s Only Us tour is scheduled to begin next week in Houston, Texas and features a stacked lineup of support acts including GloRilla, Rylo Rodriguez, Gloss Up, The Kid LAROI, and Hunxho. So why are several dates suddenly canceled without explanation?
As of the time of publishing, Phoenix, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Denver, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Pittsburgh all got canceled this past week. Affected ticketholders will not need to do anything to receive their refunds.
While no explanation was given, fans began to theorize the reasons. The most obvious one is low ticket sales. A tweet featuring screenshots of the abundance of seats going for sky-high prices recently went viral, prompting a discussion about accessibility when it comes to concerts.
Lil Baby’s tour is cancelling dates due to lack of ticket sales pic.twitter.com/d1xOmPPS5Y
— brown ??? (@BrownRapFan) July 13, 2023
Ticket costs – for one. It’s also much more common to see artists reach 1M+ in streams & views. Those, however, don’t necessarily translate to ticket sales.
— Morgan Gold (@MorganGoldMusic) July 16, 2023
Studies have shown that ticket prices have nearly quadrupled from 1996 to 2019, with the average cheapest ticket still being nearly $100. Add in Ticketmaster’s widely hated hidden fees, transportation, merchandise costs, and more, and an average night out for a music lover can run into the hundreds.
Others felt that Lil Baby was not the right fit to book an arena tour.
Unpopular opinion: Lil Baby has not crossed over enough to do arenas https://t.co/SbxI8IsKPV
— The Great Black Hope (@EmporiumCeo) July 14, 2023
Lil Baby was at the center of a similar discussion in 2021 when he hit the road with Lil Durk. In an appearance on the Flagrant 2 podcast, Akademiks questioned how feasible it would be to do an arena tour. “Lil Baby’s trying to do arenas about 10,000 to 15,000,” Akademiks said. “They said his tour’s doing bad. You’ll never see him post that his tour is sold out, they said it’s not selling that much.”
For what it’s worth, the tour proved to still be fairly successful, netting over $15 million in ticket sales across the 26-date tour.
Complex has reached out to Lil Baby’s representatives for comment.
