How Macklemore Took On The NFL, The Israel Lobby, Live Nation–And Won:
The chain of events that led to the rapper Macklemore’s ejection this week from a concert tour for the sin of proclaiming “Free Palestine” before a screaming football stadium in New Jersey unfolded in trite and predictable fashion.
First, a real estate developer with fewer than 1,000 X followers and a surname pronounced like “whine” garnered 4.5 million views with a lengthy post recounting his experience purchasing $180 worth of Ed Sheeran tour merchandise only to be insulted with a “lecture on Middle East politics” from an apparent serial abuser of “tropes.”
Then, an antisemitism nonprofit backed by billionaire casino heiress Miriam Adelson launched a petition urging friends of Israel to pressure Sheeran to renounce his opening act, and billionaire football/antisemitism mogul Bob Kraft joined forces with the billionaire owners of six other football teams from cities remaining on the schedule to order Sheeran to banish Macklemore from the tour.
After a full week of tension-filled meetings and a 40-minute personal phone call with Kraft, Sheeran complied, cementing a familiar cycle.
But then something strange happened: A tidal wave of public backlash turned Macklemore into the undisputed victor of the PR skirmish. All four of Sheeran’s other opening acts quit the tour in solidarity. Celebrities from former star NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick to beloved children’s YouTube personality Ms. Rachel to Broadway actress Allie Trimm chimed in to share stories of oligarch silencing. Ticket prices for the remaining dates of Sheeran’s tour on the resale market collapsed. And internet sleuths began picking apart the sordid personal history of Robert Kraft, who by the close of the news cycle had even pledged to donate $2 million to humanitarian relief in Palestine, issuing a statement saying: “I believe deeply that all lives are worth protecting.”
The day before Macklemore’s offending performance at MetLife Stadium, the concert promoter who had spearheaded the tour sent a beseeching letter to David Teslicko, the acting antitrust official ostensibly in charge of finalizing the consent decree the Justice Department will impose upon Live Nation as a condition of the Trump administration’s absurd, Ari Emanuel–inspired decision earlier this year to drop its comprehensive antitrust case against the concert monopoly.
“My name is Louis Messina, and I am founder of Messina Touring Group, [and] I write this letter because I am concerned the music industry is broken,” he wrote, humbly identifying himself as the concert promoter of such luminaries as Sheeran, Taylor Swift, and George Strait. “While I am of course worried about the survival of my own business, I am more worried about the entire music industry falling into the hands of one company. Most artists, agents, and managers are afraid of speaking out against Live Nation because they could lose everything if Live Nation turns against them. Live Nation already has turned against me. I have nothing to lose so I can tell it like it is. If Live Nation keeps its monopoly money, and if Live Nation prevents artists from using other promoters at their amphitheaters, it is not just going to result in fans paying more money. It will result in one company controlling the entire pipeline of talent.”
Messina, who had founded his first concert promoter PACE Concerts (now part of Live Nation) back in 1975, and had made so much money over the years for Ticketmaster, and engendered so much loyalty among uniquely profitable performers like Swift and Sheeran, was shocked that the concert monopoly would go into all-out war with him, especially in the middle of an active comprehensive federal antitrust investigation with bipartisan support. “What I experienced in 2024 drove home how easy it is for Live Nation to destroy my business, like it has destroyed other promoters, and how something needs to change or Live Nation will always be able to hold the industry hostage,” he wrote.
It was during this hostage standoff that Messina signed Macklemore to perform ten dates of Sheeran’s “The Loop” tour. It was Sheeran’s request: The two had become famous around the same time in 2012, performed a sappy song together about the birth of Macklemore’s first child, and more recently the rapper had caused a minor earthquake in the area of the stadium when he opened a concert for Sheeran in his hometown of Seattle.
The article details the unholy alliance between Live Nation, pretty much the entire entertainment industrial complex and, of course the NFL owners who control the large stadiums:
Two weeks after the song’s release, the Biden administration filed the comprehensive antitrust complaint whose first sentence explained why it was so easy for the music industry to shut out a gadfly like Macklemore: “One monopolist serves as the gatekeeper for the delivery of nearly all live music in America today: Live Nation, including its wholly owned subsidiary Ticketmaster.” Live Nation subsidiaries or affiliated entities served as talent managers for hundreds of the most popular pop musicians, concert promoters for hundreds more, owner/operators of hundreds of the world’s top concert venues, and the ticket scalper of something like 80 percent of the event tickets sold in the United States. Ostensibly independent stadium management companies or talent management firms also comprised part of a “self-reinforcing” constellation of allied entities management called the Live Nation “flywheel.”
A critical node on that flywheel, the complaint explained, was a company called Oak View Group, co-owned by Irving Azoff, the legendary talent agent who as Ticketmaster CEO masterminded its merger with Live Nation, and Tim Leiweke, the co-founder and former longtime CEO of Live Nation’s biggest competitor AEG. OVG’s primary business is stadium management and concessions, but under its auspices Azoff and Leiweke colluded with Live Nation for years, the lawsuit alleges, to steer ticketing contracts to Ticketmaster. OVG worked with the private equity giant Silver Lake Partners to sabotage a fledgling ticketing firm in which Silver Lake Partners had invested, and with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones back in 2018 to rig the bidding process for a new UT Austin stadium. Azoff, Oak View, and Jones are also all partners of varying degrees with Miriam Adelson’s Sands casino empire, which was an early backer of Azoff and New York Knicks owner James Dolan’s Sphere project; Oak View is developing a $10 billion resort on a plot of land owned by the son of the Sands CEO, and two months ago Adelson, who has been working with Jones—along with (Patriots’ owner Robert) Kraft one of the earliest investors in DraftKings—for years to lobby for legalized sports betting in Texas, hired the Dallas Cowboys owner’s Legends to oversee the development of a new arena for the Dallas Mavericks.
(W)hen (Macklemore) screamed “Free Palestine” in the Jets’ home stadium, it was easy to see the old flywheel swing into action. Adelson’s Israeli-American Council referenced it right there in its Instagram post, urging its followers to sign the petition calling on Sheeran, Messina, et al. to eject Macklemore from his remaining tour dates, and then to “Contact Live Nation: Send your message directly to one of the world’s leading concert promoters and ticketing companies!”
It’s all of a piece. Trump’s DOJ is already turning the ‘settlement’ into a mockery. He won’t be in office forever.
Meet the Champions Of The Peruvian Rainforest:
There’s a flash of red down the road. We’ve already been driving for hours through the Peruvian Amazon and, at first, I think my bleary eyes are deceiving me. But as we crawl further down this long dirt strip — flanked by pineapple fields dotted with straw-hatted workers — a woman appears, her crimson dress looking like a burning flame. As we approach, I notice a cascade of necklaces across her chest. Around her waist, a belt adorned with snail shells — strung vertically like a beaded curtain — clinks and clacks as she extends her arms in greeting. “Welcome to the Nuwas Forest,” she says in Spanish.
This is Margarita Cumbia Sawao. She’s an elder of the local Awajún community, whose women have become custodians of this once-threatened area of the rainforest. They’re one of several groups of Indigenous women in the San Martín region — most of which lies in the upper Peruvian Amazon — that are working to preserve the ancestral knowledge of their people. In recent years, some of these groups have begun welcoming tourists, sharing their customs and traditions with visitors from around the world. In the Nuwas, guests are invited to learn about the Awajún’s way of life, which was once threatened by extractive farming practices and illegal settlement by Peruvians who’d migrated here from the Andes.
Margarita ushers me through the entrance to the Nuwas — around us, rows of lush, emerald-green palms and shrubs sway in the tropical breeze. This is where Margarita and other Awajún women grow their native plants, many of which have medicinal purposes. I can smell oregano and lemongrass wafting through the air, both of which are used to treat stomach bugs and colds.
Margarita explains that she moved here 40 years ago from an Awajún village further north. “We had relatives here who we’d visit. The community wanted more Awajún families to settle here so it could secure legal title to the land,” she recalls, her toucan feather earrings bobbing as she speaks. “There was nothing here then. It was all forest.” Margarita and two other women asked the community chief if they could use a remote plot to grow medicinal plants. “He said, ‘What are you talking about? Why would you want land so far from your house?’ But we persisted.”
The women got to work cultivating this wild patch of the forest. “We all worked really hard. It was a lot of work,” she remembers. Now 26 families live here and the women lead the community, preserving their people’s ancestral knowledge by growing medicinal plants that are used to cure everything from typhoid to skin infections.
Tim Tebow And The ‘Gospel Of High Yields’. Scamming in the name of Jee-zus:
In a cavernous arena in suburban Atlanta one warm day last May, I arrived at 9:00 a.m. with thousands of others to see former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow—not playing football, but as the keynote speaker at a daylong event about faith and business. By the time Tebow took the stage, a racially and generationally diverse group of thousands of Christians from metro Atlanta had been sitting in the chilly, dark arena for eight hours, swaying to worship music, laughing at Christian comedians’ wholesome jokes, and listening to tear-jerking testimonials of faith-transformed lives. It had been a long and packed day, but you wouldn’t have known it from the crowd’s rapt attention as Tebow urged us to follow “the plan that he has for you, the good works that he has in store for each and every one of you. And then when the king says go, would we just say yes?”
What exactly Tebow intended the crowd to say yes to wasn’t clear. But earlier in the day, many of them had said yes to something far less metaphysical: a three-day seminar of classes on stock market and real estate investing, for the low price of $97.
As athletes go, they don’t get much more wholesome than Tim Tebow. The 39-year-old retired NFL quarterback has had a legendary career: In 2007, he became the first sophomore to win the prestigious Heisman Trophy; he then went on to lead the Denver Broncos and defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs, but missed the opportunity to become AFC champs in 2011 against Tom Brady’s New England Patriots.
Though the latter part of his career fizzled—after underperforming for the New York Jets he shifted sports and embarked on a lackluster stint in minor league baseball while also hosting on ESPN—he remained in the spotlight largely because of his devout Christian faith. So frequently did he drop to one knee on the field that the move became known as “Tebowing.” He made frequent appearances on Christian media outlets, and in 2010 he starred with his mother in an anti-abortion Super Bowl ad sponsored by the right wing faith advocacy group Focus on the Family.
In the last few years, one expression of Tebow’s love for others has included regular speaking gigs at Life Surge, the company sponsoring the event I attended. For as little as $20, attendees get a full day of Christian celebrity speakers, uplifting preaching, worship music, and advice they are told will transform their finances. Throughout the day, members of the audience are offered opportunities to enroll in three days of “impact classes” for $97. Those who attend then have the chance to enroll in “SurgeU”—a series of courses promising to “surge your resources and influence through real estate and trade—for Kingdom impact.” SurgeU doesn’t come cheap: Packages range from about $10,000 to $40,000. Should you want to enroll but lack the cash, Life Surge connects you with a third-party lender.
We’ve all seen these scams before. Apparently, the ever-trusting Tebow hadn’t, or so he says.
Founded in 2020, Life Surge hosts about 30 one-day events a year in locations all over the country. In 2025, according to Life Surge, 117,000 people attended one-day events. The model is clearly successful, albeit not unique; many other companies offer motivational seminars leading to pricey financial classes. What makes Life Surge stand out is its Christian messaging. The company emphasizes the concept of “kingdom impact.” Basically, the more money you make, the more good works you can do, whether through tithing or Christian charity.
Key to this model are the one-day events—and the big draw for those events is the star-studded speaker program. Tebow isn’t the only athlete who has spoken at Life Surge; the company has an impressive roster, including all-time greats like the NBA’s Magic Johnson, and the NFL’s Joe Montana. On the day I attended, other speakers included former ESPN host Sage Steele, comedian Jeff Foxworthy, and Christian twin real estate influencers the Benham Brothers (whose HGTV show was canceled before it even aired after David Benham’s homophobic remarks surfaced).
(E)lsewhere—in Reddit threads, on a Life Surge Complaints FB group with 1,300 members, and in complaints to the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau—hundreds of attendees swap stories of high-pressure sales tactics infused with Christian messaging. “We believed that it would be a Christian-based day of like minded business people,” wrote an attendee in a complaint to the FTC from earlier this year. “We did not expect a bait and switch and the pressure to purchase investing classes. We are very disappointed but also concerned by the amount of people bought into this.” Another complaint read, “I am so devastated that Christians like Tim Tebow made me trust in something that has taken so much money from me. This is evil, especially because I’m disabled on a limited income.”
G-d will take me home if I don’t raise up this offering to impart wisdom to you. Just remember–“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away…”:
