Ahead of her North American tour, Lily Allen has explained why some venues were downsized.
The tour is part of Allen's 'West End Girl' tour, which has seen her perform live on stage for the last year, playing tracks from her 2025 album of the same album. These shows have seen her appear on the stage alone, singing to backing tracks and not speaking to the crowd.
Allen had kicked off the US leg of the tour at Madison Square Garden, but several shows across the country were moved to smaller venues, while a planned show at Montreal was also cancelled.
While some dates went ahead as planned without a venue change, some shows were altered, including the show in Chicago, which was fixed for the United Center, capacity of 23,500, was moved to the Chicago Theatre, capacity of 3,500.
Other shows downsized included San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Now, in an interview with The Cut, Lily Allen has explained the decision to move the shows to smaller venues.
“The ticket sales weren’t there", she said. “I think people sometimes have a misconception about artist greed. And, you know, maybe there are artists who are greedy, but let me tell you a little bit about the mechanics of how these things work: I don’t call up MSG and all of these other venues and say, ‘I’d like to book these dates, please. Thank you very much. I think I can fill these arenas.’ The company’s own promoters have data machines that tell them whether they’re going to be able to sell these tickets".
She continued: “And they offer artists a certain amount of money and tell them, ‘We would like to put on these events, and we think that we can sell out tickets. And would you like to oblige?'".
The singer went on to say that she felt “uneasy” about the tour from the beginning. “I said to my manager, ‘Are you sure? This seems like a stretch.’ And he was like, ‘This is what they’re telling me.’ So we accepted it,” she added.
“As time went on, it just looked like it wasn’t gonna happen. And we could’ve cancelled all of the shows. But I have a crew of about 50 people who all thought they’d be working through October. And I didn’t want to tell them all that they weren’t going to have work".
“Our other option was to ask the promoters if there were any other available venues that were more suited to the demand".
“I think the live industry is a minefield, and I don’t know how it works. I’ve gotten messages from people on the day of a ‘sold out’ gig saying, ‘I got a ticket for $22 today.’ So obviously a bunch of tickets are released last minute, but on our end, we’re told those tickets were sold out the day they went on sale. I don’t know what the f*** is going on. Someone knows, but it ain’t the artist".
This tour had previously seen Lily Allen perform live at Dublin's 3Arena in June. More on this here.
