Macklemore got dropped because he said some pro Palestine statements and the billionaire owner of the patriots and one of the stadiums they were arranged a boycott of many stadium owners, basically saying the tour would lose a ton of its venues if they kept him on

On one hand, ed Sheeran is comfortably extreme upper class with millions of net worth and cancelling the tour wouldn’t have really hurt him (except maybe not being able to buy a third vacation villa). On the other hand, I somewhat feel for him because the tour certainly has a ton of people employed who are very much not in that echelon of wealth. Bus drivers, caterers, security, roadies, lighting and sound people, merch desk people, etc. cancelling a tour of this size would mean fucking over dozens if not hundreds of people well beyond the headliner and openers that are financially comfortable and can easily afford to take a public stance that may cost them employment

He sucks and his music sucks but I get why this wasn’t an obvious “go fuck yourself” choice. The real villain is Robert Kraft, the literal oligarch that can arrange a blacklisting of a major concert tour at a moments notice over having his delicate feelings hurt by someone not denying a genocide. And that brings the bigger point up: I’m sure Kraft is pleased that his name barely comes up in this discussion and Sheeran catches the majority of the heat