An approach to hold a Kanye West concert in Basel, northern Switzerland, was turned down – Copyright AFP\/File JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX<\/p>\n
Swiss football club FC Basel on Monday confirmed to AFP they had turned down an approach about staging a Kanye West concert at their St. Jakob-Park ground.<\/p>\n
The US rapper had a string of performances in Europe lined up over the coming months, but several have been cancelled or postponed in the last fortnight.<\/p>\n
The 48-year-old artist, also known as Ye, has been heavily criticised for making antisemitic remarks and voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler.<\/p>\n
St. Jakob-Park in Basel, on the French and German borders, is the biggest-capacity sports stadium in Switzerland and staged the UEFA Women\u2019s Euro 2025 final. The venue can host 40,000 fans during concerts.<\/p>\n
Reigning Swiss champions Basel said they were interested in making more use of the venue in the northern city and carefully reviewed all enquiries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this case, FCB received an enquiry and considered it,\u201d a spokesman for the club told AFP when asked about West.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, after a thorough review, we decided not to pursue the project further, as we cannot, in accordance with our values, provide a platform for the artist in question within this context.\u201d<\/p>\n
The musician and producer has lost fans and several sponsorships in recent years following inflammatory comments and actions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No Basel concert was ever officially confirmed. It is understood that FC Basel was approached about a possible June 26 concert date but turned down the enquiry.<\/p>\n
Britain has blocked the US rapper from entering the country due to his outbursts, prompting organisers of a three-night London festival he was headlining to cancel the July event.<\/p>\n
West then announced last week that a concert he had planned to give in the French city of Marseille on June 11 had been postponed after authorities voiced opposition.<\/p>\n
And a concert scheduled to take place in Poland on June 19 was cancelled by the venue in Chorzow on Friday, following condemnation of his antisemitic remarks.<\/p>\n
West has previously said \u201cI love Nazis\u201d, sold t-shirts featuring a swastika on his website, and last year released a track titled \u201cHeil Hitler\u201d, which was banned by the main streaming platforms.<\/p>\n
In January this year, he took out a full-page advert in The Wall Street Journal newspaper to declare \u201cI am not a Nazi or an antisemite\u201d. He attributed his controversial behaviour to a \u201cmanic episode\u201d brought on by bipolar disorder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An approach to hold a Kanye West concert in Basel, northern Switzerland, was turned down – Copyright AFP\/File…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[871,29719,16411,29720,3663,14759,17,714],"class_list":["post-52486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-entertainment","tag-fbl","tag-hide","tag-kanye","tag-music","tag-racism","tag-switzerland","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116440101319417043","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}