Garth Brooks, the popular actor and western country singer who was all set to make a comeback to the tour after a long hiatus, faced a huge setback due to which all his five gigs had to be canceled. The entire issue was with regards to a conflict between Brooks, 52, and the Dublin City Council on the timing of the concert. The cancellation of the five concerts is likely to prove very costly to the city of Dublin, with a loss of as much as $68 million.
Brooks was supposed to perform at Dublin’s Croke Park Stadium, which has a capacity of 83000 people. The plan was for a total of five shows that were all sold-out, but the city council was willing to give permission for only three shows, and that too, during the afternoon hours instead of evening because it was a residential area and the people living nearby were totally against five straight night concerts. There was also a rule that permits the Croke Park stadium to host only three non-sporting events each year. This particular quota was already taken by the boy band One Direction, who performed here in May.
A signature campaign was taken up against the carrying out of this show, but a Los Angeles Times report said that most of the signatures were forged. The organizers of the show tried their best to negotiate with Brooks by requesting him to perform in the afternoon, but Brooks simply refused and he announced his decision of canceling the show to his fans. He was visibly disappointed and tried to console his fans who were all looking forward to see him perform.
For his comeback tour, Brooks will be performing first at Chicago. He told this news to one of his fans named Andy Roberts, who asked the singer about it at one of his shows in Las Vegas. Roberts then made this announcement on his website and posted the link to the site on Twitter.