Madonna’s Class Action Lawsuit
We really need to talk about certain artists' penchants for extremely late start times to their concerts.
On January 17th, Madonna was on the receiving end of a class-action lawsuit for taking the stage more than two hours after her concert at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn was scheduled to begin.
Not only is this practice completely unprofessional and disrespectful to their fans, it is a threat to public safety and often leads to paying full price for a service they only partially received. And unlike so many who have laughed at the lawsuit and its plaintiffs, I, for one, think that the lawsuit has merit to it.
Let me explain…
Knowing Your Audience
Madonna transcends music. She is more than one of the biggest pop stars the world has ever known; she is a pop culture icon and has been pretty much since her eponymous debut album was first released in 1983. She holds the Guinness World Record as the best-selling female recording artist of all time, with over 300 million records and over 100 million singles sold worldwide.
But let’s call a spade a spade here. She is 65 years old, and a large portion of her fans are well into their forties and above. With the high ticket prices she commands, the majority of her audiences on her current Celebration Tour are older. Due to that, many of her concertgoers have kids, jobs, and other responsibilities.
So what does a two-hour late start mean for these concertgoers? It means having to leave early because, yes, they have work in the morning. It also means paying the babysitter more… or having to leave early because childcare is expensive.
This leads to another issue, and one that is not taken into account as much as it should.
Public Safety
Yes, you read that correctly. Late starts leads to public safety concerns.
Late starts mean late ends. And, using Barclays Center as an example, New Yorkers rely on public transportation. But New York City’s public transportation system is a rarity; not many other city’s systems in the United States run 24/7… if they even have one at all. But even those who do run 24 hours, seven days a week run on limited schedules late at night. So while the Barclays Center has access to multiple subway lines and the LIRR (which isn't 24/7), many venues don't.
If a concert starts late, that means concertgoers would have to leave early in order to get the last train or bus home… or risk getting stranded and being forced to pay exorbitant cab fares, which will most likely include surge pricing.
If your area's public transit system runs late at night, extremely late starts mean navigating streets late at night to public transportation hubs and then having to wait at the bus or train station, all of which can be dangerous depending on the venue's location—particularly for women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. That is why I find it quite shocking how little Madonna cares about the safety of her audience, given that so many of her fans are one or both of those communities.
If you put public transportation aside, late starts often lead to people drinking more than they normally would while waiting for the concert to begin. It also means that those who end up staying for the whole show will be tired while driving home. One, or both, of these situations can lead to car accidents.
Not Getting What You Paid For
Extremely late starts often lead to abbreviated sets due to city and/or venue curfews, which means fans not getting the full show they paid good money for.
What Can Be Done About This?
It’s easy—and, frankly, lazy—to laugh away this lawsuit. But laugh at your own risk, because if Madonna can get away with being two hours late to a concert, that could well happen to you at your next concert. That’s why I hope that this lawsuit leads to a real conversation about the way artists treat their fans, and what can be done to protect those fans from said artists’ bad behaviors.
It seems to me that the only thing that will elicit real change is by hurting people where it really hurts: their wallets. One preventative measure is to have stipulations from venues and promoters which fines the artist by the minute for every minute they are late—within reason; things happen. Punishment for lateness has been a part of Guns N’ Roses’s contracts since their Not In This Lifetime… Tour, which reunited Axl Rose with Slash and Duff McKagan. If the notoriously late Axl Rose can show up on time to a fault these days, so can anyone else.
Another way to go about this is instituting some sort of consumer-protection regulation, especially since the prices of concert tickets have skyrocketed in recent years—and that doesn’t even mention the added costs that come with going to a concert, such as parking and all those hidden convenience fees. If concertgoers paid good money for a ticket to an event with an advertised start time, and they were forced to leave early because the event started over an hour late, or the show was cut short, why shouldn’t they be eligible for a partial or full refund?
While there is no silver bullet solution, it is my hope that this class-action lawsuit at least starts a larger conversation about better protecting fans and public safety due to artists like Madonna disrespecting their audiences.
