Raye Says AI Bots Flooded Sign-Ups for 5,000-Seat Show
Raye says AI bots and ticket touts overwhelmed sign-ups for her Royal Albert Hall performance, with 1.8 million registrations competing for 5,000 seats. Her…
LONDON — Raye says ticket touts using artificial intelligence overwhelmed sign-ups for her Royal Albert Hall show, leaving 1.8 million registrations for a one-off performance with 5,000 seats. The scale of the response forced her team to manually review applicants before a presale, as concerns grow over bots and inflated resale prices.
The performance, called This Symphony May Contain Hope, is scheduled for 23 October. Raye said the sign-up system received hundreds of thousands of fake registrations generated by AI bots.
That leaves a sharp squeeze on access.
Rather than open a presale that scalpers might exploit, Raye said her team reviewed the list and selected people they believed were real fans. Those selected were due to receive a presale link and code by email at 11:45 BST on Tuesday, with the presale opening shortly afterwards. Remaining tickets would be offered in a general sale.
“I have never witnessed bots on this scale,” Raye said in a statement shared on social media. She said it was “so important” to her that fans could buy tickets at face value.
Royal Albert Hall backs tougher ticketing rules
A spokesperson for the Royal Albert Hall said the venue invests heavily in protecting its ticketing systems from automated attacks, but argued that legislation had not kept pace with the problem.
“Artists and venues are doing everything they can to protect fans, but we cannot solve this problem alone,” the spokesperson said. “The law needs to catch up with the scale and sophistication of the ticket touting industry.”
The venue said it strongly supported the government’s plan to improve ticketing laws. A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said the government remained “fully committed to stamping out ticket touting for good”.
The dispute has direct consequences for concertgoers: a registration does not guarantee access, and a wave of fake sign-ups can make it harder for genuine fans to secure tickets at face value. In this case, the manual review was intended to reduce the risk of touts exploiting the presale, while the remaining seats were still set to go on general sale.
The government has announced plans to ban the resale of tickets for live events above face value. A draft Ticket Tout Bill was put forward in May and is due to go through further consultation and scrutiny before it can become law. Music industry and consumer groups have voiced frustration over the pace of progress.
What Raye plans for the Royal Albert Hall show
The show will feature songs from Raye’s second album, This Music May Contain Hope. The record blends old-school jazz with orchestral sound, blues, big band and soul, and its 17 tracks explore heartbreak, self-doubt and internet trolling.
Raye said the experience had changed how she viewed ticketing. “I'm not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes,” she said. “Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future.”
For this performance, the registration tally was 1.8 million for 5,000 seats.
Source: bbc.co.uk
