According to Marlon, Michael refused to rehearse or perform any of the songs from Victory and was also reluctant on embarking on the tour himself; it took his mother Katherine and fans to persuade him before he finally agreed.

After using his financial and legal expertise to help his father regain control of the team he had founded and built in the wake of a 1974 boardroom coup, the younger Sullivan, who had promoted concerts as an undergraduate at Boston College and during his United States Army service in Thailand, had begun staging concerts at the stadium to generate extra income for the team.

"State Of Shock" was also rehearsed during sound check but was never performed (although a snippet of Michael’s vocal was heard in leaked footage of the concert in Toronto).

At a meeting, Frank DiLeo, a vice president of the Jacksons' label, Epic Records, told Sullivan that the group's talks with its original promoter had broken down and they were seeking a replacement.

Sullivan had agreed that they would receive 83.4% of gross potential ticket revenues, which meant in practical terms that the group would be paid as if the show had sold out regardless of whether it actually did.

Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Chiefs, agreed to accept only a $100,000 fee for the three opening concerts instead of its usual percentage of ticket sales and concessions.

The Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, provided nearly half a million dollars' worth of free goods and services.

[10] Sullivan was particularly humiliated when the board of selectmen in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where his family's team and stadium were located, uncharacteristically denied a permit for the concert, citing "the unknown element".

This was not only a major personal embarrassment for Sullivan, but also a crippling financial blow as it denied the family the use of the only facility where they would have kept all of the revenue from sources such as concessions and parking.

It was also stated that there had been continuing security concerns about the stadium during Patriots' games and previous concerts, but the board had never denied permits on that basis before.

[10] Others pointed the possibility of lobbying from the Sullivans' business rivals, since the family had accumulated many enemies in the state of Massachusetts over years of often bitter struggle to keep control of the Patriots.

In any case, Sullivan was acutely aware that staging any sort of large event in Massachusetts at the time was considered a privilege utterly dependent on the goodwill of the board of selectmen, and thus was in no position to antagonize them further by challenging their decision.

During filming of one of the two commercials, Michael suffered second and third degree burns on his scalp when a pyrotechnic effect malfunctioned, catching his hair on fire.

[14] Joe, Jermaine, Marlon, Jackie, Tito and Randy were in favor of the plan, but Michael was not and warned them that it would be a public relations disaster.

The $30 ticket price was already higher than most touring acts (such as Prince and Bruce Springsteen) charged at the time and was compounded by the requirement to buy four.

[14] Nevertheless, when newspapers published the form for tickets to the first show in Kansas City in late June, fans lined up at stores before they opened to buy them.

Afterwards, the procedures were modified, but all sales continued to be made by mail (except for the six final shows at Dodger Stadium, where tickets were also sold through Ticketmaster).

Transporting the 365-ton (331 t) stage Michael had designed, which took up one-third of a football field (approximately 19,200 square feet (1,780 m2)), required over thirty tractor trailers.

Among the 250 workers on the tour payroll was an "ambiance director" who provided "homey touches" to the traveling parlor the group relaxed in before and after shows.

Before the tour was halfway completed, the brothers were taking separate vehicles to concerts,[14] staying on different floors of their hotels and refusing to talk to each other on the way to shows.

Meetings broke down among factions, with two lawyers frequently representing Michael's interests, another Jermaine's, and one more for Jackie, Tito and Marlon.

Although the Victory album was certified double platinum by the RIAA for sales of two million copies,[18] the shows were failing to sell out.

By early October, the time of the shows in Toronto's Exhibition Stadium, a total of 50,000 tickets had gone unsold, so Sullivan renegotiated again, getting the Jacksons to agree to revenues based on actual sales.

Immediately afterwards, he suffered a minor heart attack and left the hospital early to renegotiate with the Jacksons again, claiming losses of $5–6 million.

The Jacksons agreed to waive the stopped payment in return for a greater share of revenue from the six final shows at Dodger Stadium.

He's one of the megastars of the world, but he's still going to be a nigger megastar.Michael was so upset when he learned of King's remarks that he called his lawyer John Branca and demanded to “sue his ass”.

The $100 million asking price for the combined package made somewhat more sense when the Patriots unexpectedly qualified for Super Bowl XX after the next season, the first time they had ever done so.

Chuck Sullivan's woes increased when his wife filed for divorce, and he had to set up a luxury box at Foxboro Stadium as his personal living quarters.

[22] Margaret Maldonado, the mother of two of Jermaine's children, has alleged that Jackie in fact broke his leg in an automobile accident: his first wife Enid deliberately ran him over in a parking lot after catching him with Paula Abdul.

Eddie Van Halen made a special guest appearance doing the "Beat It" guitar solo on July 13 in Irving, Texas.