The postponement of the first concert of The Weeknd's tour was announced shortly after doors opened.
The Weeknd was set to kick off his 'After Hours Till Dawn' tour in his hometown of Toronto, Canada on Friday night, July 8, but the concert was postponed after a widespread outage on the Rogers Wireless network caused serious problems throughout the country.

 
The postponement of the concert was announced shortly after the doors opened, with The Weeknd commenting in a post on his Instagram stories about 90 minutes later that he was "devastated".

“I've been on site all day, but it's out of our hands because of the Rogers breakdown. Operation and safety were compromised and I tried to do my absolute best,” he wrote.

“This hurts more and we will manage to make this concert happen, but unfortunately not tonight. I know how long you waited and how hard many of you worked to come to the concert and experience this special moment with me. I look forward to seeing you all,” he added.

Tour promoter Live Nation said in a statement: "The Weeknd was on site and ready to perform, but due to the nationwide outage on the Rogers network, The Weeknd's scheduled concert at the Rogers Center tonight will be cancelled. postponed, as the site's operating systems and infrastructure cannot function until service is fully restored."

Sources tell Variety that the announcement of the concert's postponement was made so late because The Weeknd's team was scrambling until the last minute to find a way to pull off the technically complex show under the circumstances.

Fans outside the concert venue after the postponement was announced were more sad and disappointed than angry.

The Weeknd - Billboard Music Awards 2021
The feelings of many of the 25 or so people Variety spoke to were summed up by a 23-year-old fan from Newmarket, north of Toronto, who commented: "It's nobody's fault so it's hard to be angry, I'm just disappointed."

Even two fans from Switzerland, also 23, were more sad than angry: "We've been looking forward to this for months and tomorrow we're going home!" they said.

 
However, some were angry. "They didn't tell us anything," said an 18-year-old fan from Toronto. “We came all the way here and they didn't give us a few hours notice like they usually do. If they had technical difficulties, they should have said something earlier."

As The Weeknd notes in his message, the venue — which, ironically, is sponsored by Rogers, the wireless company that suffered the outage — is so thoroughly networked that it would be unsafe to hold the show under these conditions .

The Rogers Centre, formerly known as the Skydome, is a cashless venue and all transactions – for merchandise, food, drinks and the majority of tickets – are Wi-Fi-based, unless spectators have saved their their ticket in Apple Wallet or other non-WiFi-based applications.

While anyone who doesn't live in Canada might think that the postponement of The Weeknd's concert was over the top, the breakdown started around 04:30am. local time and affected the entire country of Canada: Government and banking systems, parking lots and countless other businesses could not process transactions.

The Weeknd's 'After Hours Till Dawn' tour was originally set to take place in 2020, titled 'The After Hours Tour', but was canceled due to the pandemic.

The Weeknd was scheduled to be joined by Doja Cat, who pulled out of the tour in May due to a health issue and was replaced by three new opening acts: Swedish R&B star Snoh ​​Aalegra, Canadian soul singer Kaytranada and hip-hop DJ/producer Mike Dean;