Ye proved his drawing power once again, packing the Alamodome in San Antonio with exactly 60,111 fans for his Independence Day weekend concert, giving the venue the second largest concert crowd in its history.
The July 4 performance arrived after being announced less than two weeks in advance, yet fans still traveled from across Texas, Washington, D.C., and even overseas to catch the Grammy winner’s only Texas stop during this stretch of his summer tour.
The attendance fell just short of the Alamodome concert record, which still belongs to George Strait’s nearly 71,000 fans in 2013. The building’s overall single event attendance record remains the San Antonio Spurs’ 2014 NBA championship celebration, which attracted 76,483 people.
Leading up to the show, the event became the center of a heated debate. San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and several city council members pushed to cancel the concert, citing Ye’s history of antisemitic rhetoric. The effort ultimately failed after other council members opposed canceling the booking, arguing that doing so would create a troubling precedent surrounding free speech. Local reports also indicated the concert generated about $1.7 million in revenue for the city owned venue.
Once the lights came up, the focus stayed on the music. Ye delivered a 35 song career spanning performance while standing atop a massive smoke covered sphere for much of the night. He spoke very little between songs and avoided discussing the controversy surrounding the event, instead letting his catalog carry one of the biggest concert nights the Alamodome has ever seen.
