Major League Baseball said they would stop running promotions for Roger Waters’ upcoming North American tour following criticism from Jewish advocacy groups.
As part of an ad buy by AEG/Concerts West, advertisements for tickets to Waters’ This Is Not a Drill trek were shown on MLB platforms. This drew the ire of Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith, which has been critical of Waters for his support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
A representative for Waters declined to comment on the matter. AEG did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
Waters’ views on Israel “far exceed the boundaries of civil discourse,” the organization wrote in a letter to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred earlier this month.
“B’nai Brith is saddened and outraged that baseball – the sport of Jackie Robinson, Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, and Roberto Clemente – would use its online resources to publicize an individual with an alarming history of anti-Semitic hatred.”
Major League Baseball initially said they would respond to B’nai B’rith in private, and on Saturday the league confirmed to the Associated Press that “there are no plans to schedule any more [Waters] ads on the MLB platforms.”
It’s unclear why MLB would house ads for the This Is Not A Drill tour since the trek will only visit “in-the-round”-capable arenas and not baseball stadiums; in 2011, on a still-active page on the MLB.com site, the league promoted Roger Waters’ The Wall concert at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park, home of the Phillies.
Waters’ summer tour begins July 8th in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and concludes October 3rd — a month shy of Election Day — in Dallas, Texas.
“As the clock ticks faster and faster and faster down to extinction, it seemed like a good thing to make a fuss about it, so that’s why I’m going on the road,” Waters said of the tour. “To be blunt, we need to change the way we organize ourselves as a human race or die. This tour will be part of a global movement by people who are concerned by others to affect the change that is necessary. That’s why we’re going on the road. That’s why speak to each other in pubs. That’s why this conversation should be on everybody’s lips, constantly, the whole time, because it’s super important. So I hope you’ll all come to the shows. This is not a drill.”
