Little by little, shady Global Citizen has seen its big Central Park concert whittled down.
On Sunday September 27, Global Citizen has been reduced to featuring The Weeknd, Shakira, and Tyla. The superstars are gone, the rock bands like Coldplay, and so on. It’s a sad story since last year’s line up was Post Malone, Doja Cat, Jelly Roll, Rauw Alejandro, LISA, Benson Boone, and RAYE.
Still set to show up is Hugh Jackman, who doesn’t seem to get it.
Global Citizen — which boasts salaries in the millions now including upwards of $520,000 for CEO Hugh Evans — is about nothing but pretends to be saving the world. In the three years of the Ukraine war, they’ve said nothing. Ditto two years of the Israel-Hamas-Gaza conflict.
The concert will be shown streaming live on YouTube and Amazon and a few other platforms. But the broadcast TV component looks like it’s gone for good as no one ever watched it.
Charity Navigator has finally caught up with Global Citizen and lowered its rating to 85% or three stars. I think that’s being very kind.
On its Form 990 for 2023, Global Citizen listed 10 employees with salaries over $200,000. Two more were were just under that number. Evans is the highest paid, but runner up is Elizabeth Henshaw, for $419,000. Total salary or compensation for the top execs came to $2.4 million. All salaries ran up to over $13 million.
If you’re going to put on massive rock shows, you have to pay someone to do it. In 2023, Global Citizen paid Live Nation Paris almost $4.7 million stage a concert. They also paid producers Done & Dusted almost $6 million.
Meantime, grants paid out to the poor, starving, etc were reduced by over $1 million to just $3.6 million. In other words, the money they sent to the people they were allegedly helping was less than what they paid to put on their shows. Got that?
And who will show up in Central Park to stand for hours and pay $89? The line up this year is decidedly urban and Latino. But how much of that community will take a chance that ICE isn’t laying in wait for them?
So here we go again, although it seems like people are finally wising up.
