For weeks, fans awaited confirmation of cancellation of Ozzy Osbourne’s fall tour dates – which were only formally called off a day before the first show on the calendar earlier this week. Tickets were on sale as late as Thursday afternoon for Friday’s opening date in spite of coronavirus regulations that would have made actually performing impossible.
“It’s not fair to keep people in the dark. It’s ridiculous,” fan Gregor McCormick told the BBC. He had tickets to see Sunday’s show in Glasgow. “They need to keep people up to date. We haven’t had any definitive ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Obviously in our own minds, with Covid-19, we know this is not going ahead. But people have spent hundreds of pounds. Not giving us information is absolutely diabolical.”
Sharon Osborne, Ozzy’s wife and manager, had told reporters that the tour was off, and being moved to 2022, but nothing had been finalized just yet. That hold-up may have been the reason that the original shows were not yet formally moved from the existing dates.
“Everybody’s booking their tours again for like 2022, and to find availabilities right now, it’s crazy,” she told Planet Rock in October. “Agents and facilities are going nuts, trying to get everybody back.”
On Friday, Judas Priest tweeted that the tour was postponed, with Live Nation confirming the postponement.
Existing tickets will be honored on the new event dates, and ticket-holders should contact their point of purchase for information on any refund options, should they be enabled. Osbourne’s health has been shaky in recent years, causing multiple postponements of the tour even before the coronavirus put everything on hold. Ozzy Osbourne’s new tour dates begin with a January 2022 stop at Berlin’s Mercedez-Benz Arena and continue through March of that year.
After seeing some events come back following a strong early reduction of coronavirus cases, European countries are once again on the verge of harsh restrictions on live attendance as case numbers once again rise. A planned return of fans to football matches was nixed in September, with Ireland entering a full lockdown for at least six weeks earlier this month.