TORONTO –
Thousands of fans were disappointed and distraught Friday when they arrived at the Rogers Center to learn that The Weeknd’s much-anticipated start of his world tour in his hometown of Toronto had been delayed thanks to a nationwide Rogers network outage.
It was a last-minute announcement that went viral on social media just over an hour before the show started. This caused many fans to approach the gates only to find out they weren’t getting in, and caused them to linger around the field complaining about Rodgers’ technology.
Staff spread the news by walking through the crowd with megaphones while a pre-recorded message was played every few minutes from loudspeakers outside the venue.
“I’m disappointed … we’ve been waiting for this for so long,” said Sabrina Halabi, who flew in from Calgary and booked a hotel only to find out the concert wasn’t happening when she showed her ticket.
“The Weeknd is more inventive, so I thought he would be able to (perform), but I bet he’s angrier than the rest of us.”
The musician, born Abel Tesfaye, confirmed this in a statement, saying he was “crushed and heartbroken” before blaming it on Rogers.
“I’ve been on the scene all day but I’m not up to snuff because of Rodgers’ interruption,” he said.
“Operations and safety have been compromised and I’ve done my best.”
The Rogers Center added in a statement that details of the new show date will be shared as soon as possible and that existing tickets will be honored.
That wasn’t much comfort to Laura Rees, who cried out in surprise when she heard the announcement over the loudspeaker. She had just gotten off the highway from Waterloo, Ontario, with her two daughters and husband.
“We are a huge concert family; we’ll probably go to year eight or nine before COVID,” she said.
“Once COVID hit, it was a big shutdown for us, (and now) everyone wants out. I just want to hear the music.”
Rees pointed out that this is yet another inconvenience for Canadian music fans who are trying to get back into the habit of buying tickets to live concerts, but too often find themselves left in the lurch.
In June, Justin Bieber postponed two concerts at Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena just hours before his concert, leaving fans to walk outside the venue as reality sunk in.
The pop singer from Stratford, Ont., would later say he retired because he suffered from Ramsey Hunt syndrome, a form of facial paralysis.
The Weeknd’s show was perhaps even more eagerly anticipated as it was the start of a world tour and the culmination of several years of success for the Canadian artist in the city where his music career flourished.
Since the start of the pandemic, The Weeknd has become one of the industry’s biggest stars, aided by the success of his 2020 album After Hours, which broke records on the Top 40 charts, leading to a gig headlining the show at 2021 Super Bowl Halftime
The After Hours Til Dawn stadium tour has been billed as Tesfaye’s next spectacular.
After the Super Bowl, the singer decided he wanted to go bigger, so he canceled his arena tour plans and refunded all tickets. At the time, he said that “due to venue limitations” he would move his concerts to stadiums and raise his ambitions, while fans who had already bought tickets would get a first try at buying new ones.
His changes meant that dates in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal were permanently removed from the calendar.
Leading up to the new series of shows, Tesfaye teased the big reveal in Toronto with images of a massive and elaborate stage that looked like a post-apocalyptic city.
But when Rogers’ network went down Friday morning, some fans questioned whether The Weeknd could deliver the high-tech show he promised if the venue’s infrastructure wasn’t working properly.
“It felt heartbreaking,” said Himani Patel, who was still reeling from how Rogers’ interruption threw her plans into turmoil.
“We thought they’d come up with something like using Bell or something. We didn’t think it would affect (the show) that much. It was so upsetting that all this hype came to nothing.”
Other Friday concerts were also affected by the outage, with Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena offering attendees of the Roger Waters show to keep their mobile tickets in their Apple Wallet or Google Pay, depending on the phone model they have.
A few blocks away, Massey Hall was encouraging people to print out their tickets for comedian Hannah Gadsby’s Friday night show, and the same was true for the Budweiser Stage, also in Toronto, where country music star Keith Urban was scheduled to play.
The cashless venue also urged people to bring a credit card to pay for food and drink as the outage affected debit transactions administered by Interac.
Across the country, the outage left businesses and customers without internet, forced some retailers to accept cash only and caused problems for police, radio broadcasters and Service Canada’s passport services.
Rogers did not provide an explanation for the problems, but said late Friday that it was beginning to restore service.
The Weeknd’s 19-date North American run moves to the United States next week before he returns to Canada to play Vancouver’s BC Place on August 25.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 8, 2022.
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