The Arkansas authorities Thursday seized the liquor license of a concert hall planning what had been billed as the first major rock concert since the pandemic, forcing the promoters to delay the show, which was originally scheduled for Friday in Fort Smith.

A day earlier the state Department of Health issued a cease-and-desist order to the promoter, Temple Live, anticipating that it intended to violate state rules governing the reopening of concerts. The promoters said they were applying to reschedule the concert, featuring Travis McCready, a country-rock singer, for just a few days later, Monday, May 18, at Temple Live.

The promoters denounced what they characterized as a pre-emptive, and heavy-handed enforcement action while, they said, negotiations were ongoing.

“‘We the people,’ three amazing words, and they have been trampled on today,” Mike Brown, a representative of Temple Live, said at a televised news conference.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said that the concert failed to meet the state’s public health directives for live concerts. The challenge had attracted national attention because the show was seen as a potential test of whether fans were ready to return to live musical events after the coronavirus brought the concert industry to a halt in March.

Starting Monday, May 18, the governor is allowing indoor venues such as theaters, arenas and stadiums to reopen in Arkansas, but he had insisted that audiences be limited to fewer than 50 people. Temple Live had planned on more than four times that number of fans — 229 — in the 1,100-seat theater for the concert, which was scheduled for just three days before the relaxed guidelines took effect.

Promoters had remained defiant this week, accusing the state authorities of discrimination because churches were already allowed to open, with social distancing requirements but without limits to the number of people attending. “We are not trying to be difficult,” Mr. Brown told reporters on Wednesday. “We just want to be treated fairly and with respect.” Mr. Brown said tickets for the Friday show would be honored on Monday.

He had asked the authorities to provide scientific evidence that the virus could be more easily transmitted at a concert than a church. In public comments Wednesday, a health department official said the concert was different because people would be attending from different states and so coming into contact with people they would not normally encounter.

Attention is now likely to shift to another concert the promoter is planning involving Mr. McCready, scheduled for Saturday in Pineville, Mo., about two hours away.

That concert is to be held outdoors at the Tall Pines Distillery where the audience is being limited to 400 people. The setting for the concert is an eight-acre field, which organizers said will make it relatively straightforward to meet social distancing requirements.

The organizers said local health authorities had not raised any questions about the event. Officials at the mayor’s office in Pineville and at the McDonald County department of health in Missouri did not immediately return requests for comment. Missouri officials are allowing concerts as long as social distancing and other precautions are observed.

Authorities and music industry executives around the country are increasingly having conversations about timetables for reopening music venues. In Wisconsin, venues faced a question of how soon they could be ready to host concerts after the state Supreme Court on Wednesday voted to reject the extension of the state’s stay-at-home order.

Bruce Peterson, a concert promoter in Wisconsin, said that most of the larger venues he works with have already resigned themselves to staying closed for the summer. That’s because planning and booking musical acts typically takes six to nine months, and, with the aura of uncertainty still prevailing in the state, it’s difficult for venues to make commitments at this point.

But some smaller venues were already making plans to reopen. The Saloon on Calhoun With Bacon, a music hall outside Milwaukee with a capacity of less than 400, is preparing to reopen on May 20. Dave Dayler, the owner, said the Saloon’s first live musical performance would be on May 23; he said he planned to keep visitors far from the musicians onstage, check temperatures at the door and follow whatever limitations local authorities impose.

“We want to do this right,” he said.

In Arkansas, the health department cease-and-desist order was issued Wednesday. But on Thursday, the governor seemed receptive to the event’s going forward at a later date, even though the promoters had not shaved the planned attendance. The governor’s office said that under the new guidelines, a venue can reopen with more than 50 people as long as it is less than a third full. The governor noted, however, that the application for the new date would still need the approval of state health officials.

The pressure on the promoters had increased Thursday when the Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Control Administration suspended Temple Live’s alcohol permit. “We did pick up the actual permit this morning,” a department spokesman, Scott Hardin, said.

The promoters said they had been told the permit would be returned now that they have canceled the May 15 show.

Providing a glimpse of how concerts might change in the Covid-19 era, Temple Live had said it would be protecting concertgoers’ safety with precautions such as taking their temperatures when they arrived, directing them along one-way walkways, requiring face masks, reducing the numbers below the theater’s capacity and seating people apart in “pods,” or small gatherings, restricted to friends and relatives who are comfortable together.

Arkansas has recorded 4,366 cases of coronavirus, and 98 deaths.

Julia Jacobs contributed reporting from New York.