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Justin Bieber scales back eight stadium dates to arenas

Justin Bieber has scaled back eight concerts on his 45-date stadium tour to smaller arena performances due to coronavirus concerns leading to slow sales.

The eight arenas that will be hosting the new smaller concerts posted on Twitter that the changes have been made due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

While slow ticket sales were a concern, the decision was made to instead fill an arena in the same city and not take on the financial burden of a stadium.

Bieber has also highlighted the changes in the tour dates section on his website, indicating that the gig scheduled to be held at the 69,143-capacity Nissan Arena in Nashville has been relocated to the 18,500–capacity Bridgestone Arena, home to NHL ice hockey franchise the Nashville Predators.

The other new venues include Gila River Arena, Toyota Center, American Airlines Center, Schottenstein Center, Rocket Martgage Fieldhouse, Capitol One Arena and Little Caesars Arena.

According to Variety, a source close to the tour describes it as “a hard decision” based on softer markets in select cities where tickets went on sale just days before the coronavirus hit.

Meanwhile, the weekend saw the cancellation of the 2020 edition of the technology and entertainment festival South by Southwest in Austin, Texas due to coronavirus fears.

Organisers, who last week maintained that the event would go ahead on March 13-22, said they had no choice but to call it off for the first time in its 34-year history. The festival suffered several big name cancellations, including Apple, Amazon Studios and Facebook, as well as a petition to cancel the event that reached 55,000 signatures.

In 2019, SXSW welcomed nearly 74,000 punters with over 19,000 coming from outside the US.

Image: Lou Stejskal