Nike has postponed the launch of its Air Max 1 collab with Travis Scott‘s Cactus Jack label out of respect for the death and injuries caused by crowd surging at Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston on November 5, 2021.
A statement on the NIKE SNKRS app read, “Out of respect for everyone impacted by the tragic events at the Astroworld Festival, we are postponing the launch of the Air Max 1 x Cactus Jack.”
Priced at $160, the shoe was originally slated to launch on December 16, 2021. As of yet, Nike hasn’t set a new date for the launch of the shoe. The shoe is available on StockX where pricing has jumped up since the delay was announced.
Th athletic giant began collaborating with Scott in 2017, the same year as the debut of the festival. Nike has had a big presence at the event, hosting activations and exclusive collaborative drops.
For the 2021 event, there was a Jordan-sponsored celebrity golfing event and a Nike event accessible only to SNKRS members. Nike was planning a Sunday event, which was canceled along with the rest of the festival following the deadly concert.
The announcement from Nike follows on the heels of news Astroworld claimed a 10th victim, Ezra Blount, who passed away on Sunday. The nine-year-old attended the concert with his father, Treston Blount, and grandfather and was on his father’s shoulders when the crowd began to surge.
In a post on a GoFundMe page set up by Treston to help cover the cost of Ezra’s medical expenses, he explained Ezra was sitting on his shoulders when a crowd surge crushed them. The father passed out and when he came to, his son was missing. He searched the concert grounds, but by then a severely-injured Ezra had already been taken to a hospital.
Following the postponement of the 2020 event due to COVID-19, there was foreshadowing the festival this year could get out of hand. On opening day, attendees, many of whom had waited in line overnight, stormed past the gates and a pile up caused several people to be trampled over and injured, though not severely.
