Why a Cancelled Tour Costs Fans More Than It Costs the Tour

Shawn Mendes opened his Wonder tour at Moda Center in Portland on June 27, 2022. It was routed through 77 arenas in North America, the UK and Europe. He played seven. A month later, Pollstar reported that every remaining date was cancelled, after a first statement in which Mendes said the tour had caught up with him and he'd "hit a breaking point."

If you had a ticket for show number eight, that was a disaster. For the business around a tour that size, a cancellation is something the plan already allows for. Arena and stadium tours by major acts in the US and Europe are planned and paid for on the assumption that some dates will fall. When illness or injury takes a show, insurance covers a share of the income the artist and the promoter were guaranteed, and a make-up date at the same building, which can be the following year, soaks up the rest. What nobody covers is the fan's flight, hotel and night off. Below arena level, without that kind of policy behind a tour, much less of this holds.

The policy has a name

It's called non-appearance insurance. Frank Zuccarello, a partner at Exceptional Risk Advisors, explained how it works in Insurance Journal in April 2023. It's written to protect whoever owns the policy if "a show or series of shows is missed, postponed, abandoned, or rescheduled," and what sets it off includes the death, injury or illness of an artist on the bill. He wrote that it's not uncommon for major touring artists to have a tour insured for upwards of $50 million, and that buyers usually protect between 50% and 85% of their guaranteed income. Traditional insurers have trouble with it, so it goes to specialty carriers like Lloyd's.

Nobody has said whether the Wonder tour carried a policy like that, or whether one would have paid out on a cancellation like his, and I'm not going to guess. What Zuccarello describes is common at that level, by his account.

That's the "priced in" part of Concert Law #8, which goes: "An 80-date tour is a 40-date tour with the cancellations already priced in." The 80 and the 40 aren't a count. The one real figure I can point to is far lower. Live Nation told Stereogum's Zach Schonfeld in June 2024 that it was running a 4 percent cancellation rate across all venue types that year, level with the year before. That's one company's figure for its own business, and it's the only one I have.

Schonfeld was writing because two arena tours had just come off the calendar about a week apart. The Black Keys cancelled their whole North American arena run, 31 dates, on May 24, 2024, and said new dates would offer a "similarly exciting, intimate experience," which he read as smaller rooms. Then Jennifer Lopez, who had already cut seven shows, called off her entire tour. Sources said it was for personal reasons, and Schonfeld's own view was that weak ticket sales "probably didn't help." Neither was reported as a health cancellation, so illness isn't the only thing that takes dates out. A company that can quote you its cancellation rate expects cancellations every year. I read the 4 percent as a number somebody budgets against.

The part of the law that holds up is the ending. By the time a big tour is routed, somebody has already asked what happens if the singer gets sick in week three, and paid for an answer.

The make-up date does the rest

Madonna's Celebration tour was 43 cities, due to open in Vancouver on July 15, 2023. On June 24 she developed a serious bacterial infection and spent several days in intensive care, and Variety carried her manager Guy Oseary's statement that they'd have to "pause all commitments, which includes the tour."

By the middle of August there was a new schedule. Live For Live Music reported a North American leg starting that December and running to the following April, with tickets for the rescheduled shows good on the new dates. A few cities got no new date at all. Tulsa and Nashville were among the shows cancelled over scheduling conflicts, with refunds.

Seen from the tour, most of that is a delay. The shows still happen and the tickets are still good.

Seen from a seat, it depends on where you live. If you'd booked a flight to Vancouver for July, you were holding a July flight for a show that had moved by months. If you were in Tulsa you got your ticket money back and nothing else.

Who that leaves out

The buyer, first. The insurance protects whoever owns the policy, and Zuccarello's piece is about artists, business managers and promoters. He notes the promoter often keeps the bulk of the risk. A ticket refunds or carries over to the new date. The flight, the hotel and the night you took off work don't, and a show rescheduled to next year lands on a date plenty of people can't make. The only protection a fan has is on their own side of the booking: a fare that can be changed and a room that can be cancelled.

Then every act below arena level. Zuccarello was writing about what his headline calls mega-concerts, and his piece says nothing about how a club or theatre tour would get this kind of cover. An act with no $50 million policy behind it that loses a run of shows just loses the money. The cancellation that's a line in the budget for an arena headliner can end a smaller tour.