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Zach Bryan broke the attendance record at Robert Kraft’s Gillette Stadium on Saturday night, performing for 73,538 fans — the largest crowd for any event in the venue’s history — while wearing a “Free Palestine” shirt
for the second night in a row.
The move was a statement on several levels, but was pointedly directed at Kraft — the billionaire, Trump-supporting owner of the Foxborough, Mass. stadium — whorallied fellow stadium owners to ban rapper Macklemore from his scheduled opening slot on the Ed Sheeran tour last month from performing at their venues, after the rapper made pro-Palestine comments onstage in New Jersey. Kraft had described Macklemore’s comments as “hate speech,” with questionable accuracy.
The attendance record, which was broken on the second of Bryan’s two performances at the venue, was announced by tour promoter AEG on Sunday morning, and in a post on the stadium’s social media accounts. The latter announcement features photos of Bryan wearing the shirt, although the message is illegible and there was no mention of it in the post; however, it is referenced in the majority of the comments. Kraft used the Gillette Stadium account to defend his ban on Macklemore; a rep for Kraft did not immediately respond to Variety‘s request for comment.
The move was both a surprise — Bryan a proud Navy veteran working in the country genre, which has a fan base that would not be universally welcoming to such a purportedly left-wing position — and not, as Bryan has traditionally and steadfastly spoken his mind, from releasing a song critical of ICE raids to a bitter online dispute with country artist Gavin Adcock. According to fan footage, at least two of Bryan’s band members were wearing Palestine jerseys as well.
Bryan was seen wearing a T-shirt (with the sleeves cut off, as is his nightly custom) bearing the logo “Free Palestine.” Beneath that on the shirt were an emblem of a pine tree and another message that read “An Appeal to Heaven.” These are references to a flag commissioned by George Washington in 1775 for a fleet of schooners sent to intercept British ships; later, it became the flag for the Massachusetts Navy — giving it a distinct historical and local connection for the Boston-area show.
Bryan’s drummer, Nate Head bore a jersey with Palestine on the front and, on the back, the numeral 5 and the name “Hind Rajab.” Rajab was a 5-year-old girl in Gaza reported to have been killed by the Israeli military’s tank fire on Jan. 24, 2024, after having been trapped with her cousin and pleading for help in a disabled car for hours.
Some news outlets ran with a widely spread and apparently false statement attributed to Bryan on Saturday. The statement, in which Bryan supposedly spoke up defending his stance from the night before, came from an X account that purports to belong to the singer but does not. (Bryan’s real X account has been deactivated for some time — it’s not clear for how long, since he had a history of saying contentious things, then deactivating, then restarting it.)
Bryan’s politics have been somewhat elusive, with the singer-songwriter posting that he finds deep problems on both sides of America’s political divides. He previously raised the ire of some on the right with a song titled “Bad News,” which among its scattershot character-study lyrics, contained a seemingly negative reference to ICE (“ICE is gonna come, bust down your door / Try and build a house no one builds no more / But I got a telephone / Kids are all scared and all alone”). Following that, many on social media threatened to “Bud Light” him — that is, subject him to a boycott. But Bryan’s stadium shows have continued to be sellouts, and the artist has remained mostly apolitical as far as taking stands on any hot-button issues.
The Foxborough shows are part of Bryan’s biggest tour yet, spanning more than 40 dates across North America and Europe starting in March 2026, and adds to a record-setting year for the artist. On September 27, 2025, he became the first artist ever to play Michigan Stadium, drawing 112,408 fans, the largest ticketed concert audience in U.S. history. That show surpassed the previous mark of 110,905, set by George Strait in Texas in 2024.
