Rod Wave Countersues Grizzly Touring in $27M Lawsuit

Rod Wave countersued Grizzly Touring on October 12, 2025, answering the promoter’s $27 million breach-of-contract suit with allegations that Grizzly’s own mismanagement wrecked his Last Lap Tour, that a member company bribed his former booking agent to sneak an exclusivity clause into the deal, and that forcing him to keep performing under the contract would amount to “indentured servitude.”¹

What Grizzly Sued Rod Wave For

Grizzly Touring filed suit in late September 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Case No. 8:25-cv-02645, naming Rod Wave and his company Hit House Entertainment as defendants.² The promoter, a joint venture of AG Entertainment, Mammoth Touring, and CTS Eventim, said it had advanced $57 million to cover production, travel, and lodging across 35 arena dates supporting Rod Wave’s Last Lap album. Rod Wave performed 26 of those shows, generating about $30 million against a guarantee of roughly $29.9 million, leaving $27 million in unrecouped advances that Grizzly wants back.³

Beyond the money, Grizzly accused the artist of spending advance funds on “private jets and lavish second homes” instead of tour costs, of scaling up his production requirements to a level that made the schedule impossible, and of breaching an exclusivity clause by forming a new company, Mainstay Touring, to book his next run.³

What Rod Wave’s Countersuit Alleges

Rod Wave’s counterclaim, filed in the same federal case, flips responsibility for the tour’s collapse back onto Grizzly. His lawyers, led by James Sammataro, allege the promoter failed to properly load equipment in and out of arenas, made “unilateral, onerous and inexplicable routing and booking decisions,” and rescheduled shows so haphazardly that the artist sometimes only learned of new dates after seeing tickets appear for sale online.⁴ According to the filing, only 12 of the 35 originally scheduled shows took place on the date and at the venue announced. Sammataro argued the failures made completing the run “logistically impossible” and that Rod Wave “was left with no option but to cancel the remaining tour dates.”¹

The countersuit’s most pointed allegation concerns the contract itself. Rod Wave claims AG Entertainment, one of Grizzly’s member companies, paid his former booking agent Beau Williams at least $1.8 million in “under-the-table” payments to insert a five-tour exclusivity clause into the Last Lap deal. He says he identified and rejected that language before signing. As of mid-October 2025, neither Williams nor AG Entertainment had publicly answered the bribery claim; Williams’s representatives did not return a request for comment, and Grizzly’s lawyers declined to address it.¹

His attorneys also framed Grizzly’s demand that he keep performing under the deal as an “improper effort to force Rod Wave to specifically perform a personal services contract for Grizzly against his will,” calling it “indentured servitude.”⁵

What Rod Wave Is Asking the Court For

The counterclaim seeks several forms of relief:

A judicial declaration that the Grizzly contract is void because the promoter’s breaches terminated it.
A ruling blocking Grizzly from compelling Rod Wave to continue performing under the agreement.
Damages for breach of contract and for reputational harm from the tour’s failures and fan backlash.⁴
Court authorization to proceed with his new Redemption Experience Tour outside Grizzly’s involvement.¹

Rod Wave also contends he owes Grizzly nothing on the $27 million, arguing the promoter’s own conduct forfeited any right to repayment.¹ The dispute had been building for weeks before either lawsuit was filed. In September 2025, his attorney David Rose of Pryor Cashman sent Grizzly a letter asserting the contract and its exclusivity provisions were “no longer in effect.”³

How the Last Lap Tour Fell Apart

The Last Lap Tour was scheduled to run from October through December 2024. It ran into trouble almost immediately, with dates postponed into February 2025. A Nashville show at Bridgestone Arena was scrapped less than 90 minutes before doors were set to open in late January 2025.⁶ On January 29, 2025, Rod Wave announced on Instagram that he was canceling all remaining dates.

In those posts, he cited overlapping problems. The stage and lighting were “not built right” despite more than $13 million spent on production, a foot and ankle injury had him on pain medication throughout the run, and he acknowledged being “mentally twacked out.”⁷ He promised full refunds and said the production issues were “out of his control,” writing that the situation had been “f**ked up from the beginning. Because of production!”⁸

Mainstay Touring and the Redemption Experience

The new touring company at the heart of Grizzly’s exclusivity claim, Mainstay Touring, was publicly announced in September 2025. Rod Wave described it to Billboard as his way of taking over his own live business after the Last Lap disaster, saying he wanted to “redeem myself from the last tour” and give fans “a real experience.”⁹ A sold-out Tampa show in late August 2025 served as a test run.

The day after his countersuit, Rod Wave announced the Redemption Experience Tour, a seven-city arena run.¹⁰ Ticketmaster listings show the tour launched on December 11, 2025, at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth and wrapped in early January 2026, with a stop at State Farm Arena in Atlanta on December 28.¹¹ No court order authorizing or blocking the tour has appeared in the available record. Grizzly’s position is that the new tour violates its exclusivity rights; Rod Wave’s position is that those rights died with the contract Grizzly breached.

Where the Case Stands

The lawsuit and countersuit remain pending in the Middle District of Florida. No trial date has been set, and no rulings have issued on the core questions: whether the contract is void, whether Rod Wave must return the $27 million, and whether Grizzly can enforce exclusivity over his future tours.¹ Grizzly is represented by Weil, Gotshal & Manges, with attorneys Pravin Patel, David Yohai, and A.J. Green on the matter.¹² Rod Wave completed the Redemption Experience run without apparent legal interference, and as of mid-2026, no upcoming concert dates are listed on major ticketing platforms.¹¹

1
Billboard. Rod Wave Countersues Tour Lawsuit Canceled Concerts
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CelebrityAccess. Grizzly Touring Sues Rod Wave for Breach of Contract
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Billboard. Rod Wave Last Lap Tour Lawsuit Promoter Sues Advance
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Vibe. Rod Wave Countersuit 27 Million Grizzly Touring Lawsuit
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Complex. Rod Wave Accuses Promoter of Indentured Servitude in $27 Million Countersuit
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Rod Wave Cancels Rest of Last Lap Tour Including Milwaukee Concert
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Revolt. Rod Wave Cancels the Rest of His the Last Lap Tour
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Power 105.1. Rod Wave Addresses Fans After Backlash Over Last Minute Tour Cancellations
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Billboard. Rod Wave Interview 2025 Sinners Touring Album
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Real 93.1. Rod Wave Drops New Song Show Dates After Countersuing Grizzly Touring
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Ticketmaster. Rod Wave Tickets
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PACER Monitor. Grizzly Touring, LLC v Green et al