A DaBaby concert scheduled to take place on Friday, September 2nd at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans has been canceled due to low ticket sales.
The New Orleans Advocate reports:
Before Ticketmaster’s seating chart for the concert was deactivated Tuesday, it showed that hardly any advance tickets had been sold, even though they were priced as low as $35.
The number of tickets sold appeared to be fewer than 500 for an arena with a concert capacity of 14,000 or more.
Faced with the prospect of potentially losing hundreds of thousands of dollars if DaBaby played to a mostly empty arena, the show’s promoter apparently decided to cut his losses and cancel the show.
Jonathan Kirk, better known as DaBaby, broke out with two full-length albums in 2019. His debut, “Baby on Baby,” yielded the hit “Suge,” while the follow-up, “Kirk,” contained “Intro” and “Bop.” 2020’s “Blame It On Baby” contained the No. 1 single “Rockstar,” a collaboration with Roddy Ricch.
But even as DaBaby has notched one chart success after another, he’s also shot himself in the foot. He was involved in a couple of actual shootings, one of which resulted in a death.
Then, in the summer of 2021, he made comments onstage at the Rolling Loud festival in Miami that were widely seen as homophobic. As a result, DaBaby was booted off the roster of several other festivals last year, including Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits and Governors Ball. His non-apology apology didn’t help much.
He’s since embarked on his own headlining arena tour. But if what happened in New Orleans is any indication, his career as a live performer is at a challenging juncture.
Yikes.
