Teen pop queen Britney Spears has again delayed the start of her U.S. concert tour, postponing the launch date this time by one day, to Nov. 1, due to unspecified production delays, her record label said Monday.
Instead of a Halloween opening on Wednesday at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C., Spears will debut her tour on Thursday at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, Jive Records said in a statement.
The Washington show has been rescheduled for Dec. 21, now the last date of the tour. A Dec. 4 New York City stop at Madison Square Garden also has been moved, to Dec. 5. In both cases, tickets for the original dates will be honored for the rescheduled shows.
The statement cited “production delays” but gave no further explanation for the last-minute change. But a Jive spokesman denied that the move had anything to do with heightened concerns about the possibility of terrorist attacks on Halloween night, which falls on Wednesday.
Spears originally was set to launch her U.S. tour on Oct. 26 in Miami, but that date was scrubbed after the 19-year-old pop star returned from a promotional tour in Australia suffering from the flu, forcing a delay in rehearsals. The Miami show has been rescheduled for Dec. 19.
Spears is preparing to release her third album, “Britney,” on Nov. 6. It follows her smash LP debut, 1999’s “…Baby One More Time” and last year’s sophomore release, “Oops!… I Did It Again.”
