Eric Church Plans Free Makeup Show for San Antonio

Eric Church cancelled his sold-out show at San Antonio’s AT&T Center for Saturday, April 2nd earlier this week so he could personally attend the Duke Blue Devils taking on Church’s North Carolina Tar Heels in the NCAA Basketball Final Four game on the same day. It became country music’s version of the Will Smith / Chris Rock “slap,” with folks taking sides on how fair or selfish Eric Church was being with the move, with decidedly more falling on the side of it being a selfish move by the North Carolina native.

You knew with Eric Church’s track record of taking care of the fans in his “Church Choir” that he’d be doing something to satisfy angry patrons, some of which that had planned vacations and non-refundable travel around making it to the destination city of San Antonio to see Church. Eric Church also outright cancelled the show instead of postponing it, which left many fans in limbo.

On cue, Eric Church announced on Friday afternoon that he will be returning to the area (somewhat) to play a free show in September as a make-up to those left in the lurch by his cancellation.

“Thank you San Antonio for letting me take my family to this game,” Eric Church says. “It took a minute to figure out how to express my thanks. I will be coming to the Whitewater Ampitheater in New Braunfels, TX on Friday, September 2, 2022 for a ONE of a kind FREE show for those of you who bought tickets and were planning to attend our cancelled San Anotnio show. Details to be announced soon.”

Those details will be quite important, because some 18,000 tickets were sold to Eric Church’s gig at the AT&T Center, while the capacity at the Whitewater Ampitheater is 5,600. Even with a matinee performance along with a night one, it would still be difficult to facilitate all the patrons who bought tickets originally, though perhaps not all of them would be up for making it to New Braunfels to take advantage of the opportunity.

The Whitewater Ampitheater is about an hour north of where the AT&T Center is. New Braunfels is about halfway between Austin and San Antonio. Also, one of the concerns about the initial cancellation was the amount of individuals traveling from out-of-town, or out-of-state to attend the concert, since San Antonio is a destination/tourist-oriented city. How many of those out-of-town patrons will make the trek to New Braunfels is a good question.

Nonetheless, Eric Church has made an effort to make it right to folks, and may have experienced problems trying to outright reschedule at the AT&T Center since it hosts San Antonio Spurs games and other big events, and may have not had another free Friday or Saturday to offer in 2022.

Either way, Eric Church’s move will likely continue to be debated in a time in live music when the pandemic has made cancellations more common, and worthy excuses (if any excuse at all) given to ticket holders a lot less.

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