Over the last few weeks, a rash of U.S. artists have cancelled or downsized planned tours.

‘Rash’ is an apt collective noun here. Page Six reporter Ian Mohr was the first to label the trend ‘Blue Dot Fever’, citing industry sources, in reference to the blue dots representing unsold seats at a concert venue on the Ticketmaster website.

You likely already know about Ticketmaster’s grip on the U.S. music industry, but for once, this is a touring story that’s not only about the Live Nation-owned ticketing company.

So, why are artists cancelling their tours? Let’s find out.

The first sign of a touring issue came at the end of May 2024, when Jennifer Lopez cancelled a series of U.S. dates.

At the time, Lopez said she was “heartsick” about the decision, while Live Nation said she needed to take “time off to be with her children, family and close friends.”

Industry publications reported the tour was not selling well, though Variety cited “sources close to Lopez” saying poor sales weren’t the reason it was cancelled (Lopez and then-husband Ben Affleck had already quietly separated by that point).

If we choose not to believe “sources close to Lopez,” why weren’t tickets selling?

Lopez had already tried to rebrand the tour before abandoning it altogether, perhaps to distance it from her new album that year, This is Me… Now, which peaked at 38 on the overall Billboard album chart.

There were also economic reasons. In early 2024, U.S. economic authorities were fighting off lingering post-COVID inflation by increasing interest rates, which make it more expensive to have a mortgage and borrow money.

By the time JLo’s tour dates went on sale, U.S. interest rates were at a decade-high, making life expensive. Meanwhile, grocery prices were also surging, and petrol prices were at a peak that wouldn’t be exceeded until Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz this year.

High interest rates + high grocery and petrol prices = no spare money to see JLo live in concert.

While we can’t know for sure why Lopez pulled the plug on her tour, we can consider her patient zero of Blue Dot Fever.

Almost two years later, in arguably worse economic conditions, a series of artists have recently cancelled or downgraded their U.S. tours.

The first was singer/songwriter/professional-earworm-creator Meghan Trainor (🎶I could have my Gucci on), who cancelled her Get In Girl tour in mid-April, two months before it was due to begin.

Trainor had intended to perform in 31 arenas across North America, with each venue seating 12,000 to 20,000 people. She said the cancellation was due to having too much on her plate, between planning the tour, releasing her latest album, and her new baby, though Variety reported low sales at some venues.

Then came Post Malone, who nixed the first few weeks of his planned Big Ass Stadium Tour Part 2, citing the need to finish new music. The tour was the second half of a series of dates that had already seen him travel around the U.S. and Europe in 2025, promoting his 2024 album F-1 Trillion. The genre-shifting artist had already spent most of 2024 touring the same album.

Per The New York Post, some of Post Malone’s cancelled shows had many tickets still available weeks out. Could it be that he’d exhausted the audience with multiple dates in the same cities over back-to-back years?

Finally, the reunited Pussycat Dolls cancelled all of their North American tour dates, seven weeks after announcing them.

“After taking an honest look at the North American run, we’ve made the difficult and heartbreaking decision to cancel all but one of [those] dates,” the group said in an Instagram post.

PCD are the only one of these acts to actually allude to poor ticket sales as the reason for cancelling tour dates. In other words, they were brave enough to basically say they’d come down with Blue Dot Fever.

While touring can be a lucrative exercise for the world’s biggest artists, it’s increasingly difficult for other musicians to make money on the road.

Aside from the likes of Ed Sheeran and Luke Combs, you’d be hard-pressed to name many musicians who are able to sell out arenas in 2026 by going on stage alone with a microphone and a guitar. Even more stripped-back tours still need roadies, sound and lighting techs, merch and people to sell it, a tour bus and someone to drive it, fuel to power it, and food to feed all of those people. That’s before the cost of renting a venue, security, and buying insurance in case something goes wrong.

In response, artists need to keep increasing the cost of tickets to turn a profit. However, the very reasons ticket prices are increasing are also making it harder to buy them – fans are also subject to high food and fuel prices.

In this economic environment, for many fans, it makes more sense to save up and try to see a really big artist touring a really big show, e.g. Olivia Rodrigo, who just sold out the North American and European legs of her Unraveled tour.

We also have to consider that in North America, many venues are not accessible by public transport, meaning fans have to factor in the costs of fuel and parking.

Right around the time that the phrase ‘Blue Dot Fever’ was first published, Live Nation was holding a call with its investors to report its earnings for the first three months of 2026 ($US3.8 billion).

On that call, one investor asked Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino directly about the recent cancellations.

Rapino said: “We have about 15,000 shows on sale; 100 will be canceled… We see nothing about cancellations in [2026] that would be extraordinary, always a tour, one or two that doesn't work out.”

He has since shared two X posts criticising the idea of ‘Blue Dot Fever’, one of which called it a “scalper narrative,” suggesting second-hand ticket sellers were driving the trend as a way of lashing out at artists taking more control of ticketing.

“Blaming artists and promoters for ‘overpricing’ is a much better story than explaining why they’ve been marking up tickets 10x for years,” the post Rapino shared said.

While it’s clear ticket re-sellers are a problem in the industry, that’s only one part of what’s driving poor sales and cancellations.

When we surveyed you earlier this week, more than a third of respondents said they were spending less on concert tickets to save money.

Artists are struggling to keep up with the costs associated with touring, fans are struggling to keep up with the knock-on effect of higher-priced tickets, and basically everybody loses…

Except for Taylor Swift.

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