CV NEWS FEED // Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is no longer using the popular event management platform Eventbrite after it removed a speaking engagement by swimmer and women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines.
Gaines publicly opposes men competing on women’s sports teams and has spoken out about her experience being forced to swim against Lia Thomas, a male swimmer who claims to be a woman.
“Let’s just be clear that when a company decides it’s gonna make statements on political and social issues, they have to live with the consequences,” Youngkin stated during a Monday radio interview with hosts Clay Travis and Buck Sexton.
“And the blowback here has been warranted,” Youngkin added.
The governor highlighted that at the time Eventbrite still carried events promoting the ideology of Hamas, a fact he called “unbelievable.”
He further explained his decision to cut ties with the platform:
On top of that, to proactively terminate an agreement with Riley is beyond belief. And to say that they are trying to protect some group and not the other, I think, results in the kind of action that I’ve taken.
What should happen to these companies that take these kinds of stances? The customers can fire them, and in our case, we fired them.
OutKick, a sports media source founded by Travis, “contacted the Eventbrite public relations team as well as CEO Julia Hartz for an answer to why this happened.”
“Neither responded to our inquiry,” said OutKick’s Amber Harding. “Instead, [Eventbrite] quietly removed some of the listings for events celebrating Hamas terrorists as ‘resistance fighters.’”
One event advertised by Eventbrite advocated for “Palestinian liberation” and accused Israel of “genocide.”
Gaines praised the Virginia governor’s decision to stand up to the website that deplatformed her.
“More of this,” she wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) Monday afternoon. “On behalf of all sensible people, thank you for your stance!”
Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-MO, accused Eventbrite of hypocrisy, telling OutKick:
I think it’s important that if you’re going to be a business that sort of holds yourself out there as hosting events and letting people know what’s going on and then you’re going to cancel somebody because it violates your terms of service I think the public deserves to know what is that criteria.
“What else are you doing, what else are you hiding?” he continued:
The hypocrisy has already been revealed, but there’s probably a lot more there and I think people are sick and tired of these woke corporations deciding these things. People want to know information, then they can make up their own mind.
