Nike is postponing the launch of its latest Travis Scott sneaker collaboration “out of respect for everyone impacted by the tragic events at the Astroworld Festival,” according to a statement published to the company’s SNKRS app.
Hundreds were injured at the rapper’s Houston festival earlier this month as crowd surges resulted in crushing and trampling. So far, 10 people have died, including a 9-year-old boy who became the event’s youngest victim Sunday.
It has been unclear how much of the blame for the event would ultimately fall on Scott’s shoulders. A criminal investigation into Scott and the festival’s organizer, Live Nation, is ongoing. Lawsuits have also begun to pile up, including a $750 million complaint filed on behalf of more than 125 attendees that names Scott, Drake, Apple Music and others as defendants.
Much attention has been paid to how Scott handled the event, the entirety of which was streamed live on Apple Music. The performer stopped the show at one point as an ambulance passed through the crowd, but ultimately resumed the show and continued playing for roughly 40 more minutes—including more than half an hour after a mass casualty event was declared.
In a statement posted on Twitter the day after the festival, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated by what took place.” He has also offered to cover funeral costs and mental health services for the event’s victims.
Days after Astroworld, Epic Games pulled a Travis Scott emote from the Fortnite’s daily store. On Tuesday, the Parsons School of Design issued a statement saying its partnership with the performer and his Cactus Jack Foundation had “recently concluded at the end of a one-year agreement,” according to WWD. So far, however, it appears none of the rapper’s many corporate sponsors—Dior, McDonald’s and General Mills to name a few—have fully cut ties.
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Nike originally planned to debut its Air Max 1 x Cactus Jack collection Dec. 16 with the “Baroque Brown” and “Saturn Gold” colorways, the first of which had been pre-released days before Astroworld at Space Village, a Houston boutique Scott opened last year. According to Complex, the two styles were part of a wider collection with five total colorways.
Scott’s Nike collaborations stand out as some of the most popular in the sneakerhead community and regularly snag resale prices multiple times their retail value. The now-delayed Air Max 1 “Baroque Brown,” for example, is currently listed for upwards of $2,000 in some sizes on StockX. Only one size, a men’s 5, is currently available at a price below $1,000. In April 2020, the marketplace reported that the average resale multiple for all Scott’s sneakers stood at 3.88x retail.