Did Kamala Pay Lizzo And Beyonce For Their Appearances?

A recent feature of the Harris campaign has been the disappointing appeaarances of celebrities Lizzo (in Detroit October 19) and Beyonce (in Houston October 25) to endorse Kamala. Lizzo spoke, at least according to YouTube clips, for about seven minutes, notably claiming that if Kamala wins, the whole country will be like Detroit, but didn't perform. This also happened with Beyonce at the Houston rally:

Beyoncé fans were left furious after the singer failed to perform at a Texas rally for Kamala Harris.

The star took to the stage in her native Houston to endorse the Vice President on Friday night.

Some fans had waited more than 12 hours before packing into the city's Shell Energy Stadium expecting a performance, after rumors she would sing swirled online and the Washington Post reported on her expected appearance.

The singer appeared to come tantalizingly close to delighting the crowds when she began to talk about how it is time for America to 'sing a new song'.

However, rallygoers were ultimately left disappointed when the 'Single Ladies' hitmaker made a brief appearance in which she said she was not there as a celebrity, but as a mother.

Typical reaction was Slugga: The Beyoncé bait and switch is the most Kamala thing ever. But this left observers with a nagging question: had the Harris campaign paid Lizzo and Beyonce for their appearances, even though they didn't perform? The fact checkers were on the case, at least as far as Lizzo was concerned:

In person, attendees applauded Lizzo’s brief speech. Online, some social media users said Lizzo’s support cost the campaign a pretty penny.

"BREAKING: Lizzo charged the Harris-Walz campaign $2.3 million for a single appearance at a Detroit rally," read an Oct. 22 post by an X user whose account is affiliated with a conservative account, @ConservativeOG.

Other Republicans shared this claim on X, including Sean Spicer, onetime press secretary to former President Donald Trump and an account. "You have to be pretty desperate to pay @lizzo to appear at a rally," Spicer wrote when he reshared the $2.3 million claim on X Oct. 22.

. . . We found no evidence that Lizzo was paid to make those remarks. The Harris campaign confirmed to PolitiFact that the posts’ claims are untrue.

We searched using Google and Nexis, a news database, and we found no credible news reports or other indications that the Harris-Walz campaign paid Lizzo for her appearance at the Harris event or her endorsement.

Similar questions have come up over the Beyonce appearance:

You tellin me Kamala paid Beyoncé 10 million to speak….. and they couldn’t even work it in the deal that she performs?

Shows you how desperate they are and how bad they are at negotiating business

You trust these people wit ur money? 😂

— AB (@AB84) October 27, 2024

Kamala Harris gets booed off stage in embarrassing attempt to mix a political rally with a free Beyonce concert.

Rumor has it Beyonce demanded a large sum of money and refused to even travel outside of Houston, Texas, where she lives. Beyonce has a private jet and could have… pic.twitter.com/U7kc8Oaonj

— Matt Wallace (@MattWallace888) October 26, 2024

So far, there's been no official fact check of these claims, but frankly, they have the ring of truth. Celebrities at that level see value in their names alone. I would imagine that their agents must be involved in any potential use of their names, and they aren't going to give this valuable asset away to anyone, fashion brand, breakfast cereal, or political candidate -- and even if the celebrities wanted to give away their endorsement for free, their agents wouldn't allow it.

So why was there no performance if the campaign paid them so much just to show up? I would assume that if either were going to perform, there'd be multimillions more involved, band, backup singers, stage sets, lighting, and so forth, and this would be for a free concert. People who buy tickets pay for this:

The prices for standard tickets to Beyoncé's concerts from StubHub start at approximately $102 on the lower end to nearly $400, depending on the venue. Vivid Seats offers similar price ranges for standard Renaissance World Tour tickets, ranging from about $100 in Las Vegas to $375 in Houston.

Beyonce performed at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta on Aug. 11-12, 2023 which had an attendance of 156,000 fans. It took in $39.8 million. These numbers would be beyond the capability of the Harris campaign to hold a "free" concert, and her agents wouldn't allow the product to be cheapened for anything less.

How on earth would anyone think they could get into a concert that normally costs $1-400 for free? What does it say about the Harris campaign that they'd even try to bamboozle the crowd this way?

What this does say about the Harris campaign is that it almost certainly had to pay big bucks for even a short segment of Beyonce's time and the use of her name, and it could only try to get away with a vague suggestion that anyopne who attended would get something more.

Did any of this pay off? According to Newsweek,

Vice President Kamala Harris' odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have worsened over the past 24 hours, according to a leading bookmaker.

On Friday, Betfair offered odds of 6/4 (40 percent) on Harris achieving victory on November 5, compared to 4/6 (60 percent) for former President Donald Trump. As of Saturday morning, Harris' odds had lengthened to 8/5 (38 percent), while Trump saw his odds cut to 5/8 (61 percent)—suggesting that those placing bets didn't think Harris' rally with Beyoncé on Friday gave her an immediate boost.

. . . Speaking to Newsweek about the change in odds, Betfair spokesperson Sam Rosbottom said: "Despite Harris' chances improving slightly this week after her Obama and Springsteen rally on Thursday, punters appear unconvinced by her A-list backers.

"And Harris' hopes that Beyoncé might help her run the world appear dashed, too, after the megastar's appearance at a Democrat rally in Houston failed to move the needle in her favor."

So this was a Hail Mary, or maybe more accurately, an attempt to pull off a Hail Mary on the cheap. It failed.