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British singer Raye has said that the registration process for her forthcoming one-off concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall was flooded by automated accounts. Her team received 1.8 million sign-ups for just 5,000 seats at the 23 October performance of “This Symphony May Contain Hope”. According to Raye, ticket touts used artificial intelligence bots to generate hundreds of thousands of fraudulent registrations, making it difficult to identify genuine fans. She said she had never seen bot activity on such a scale and described the situation as evidence of a changing ticketing landscape. To reduce the risk of resellers exploiting a conventional pre-sale, Raye’s team decided to manually review the registration list and select people believed to be real fans. Those selected were sent a pre-sale link and access code by email, with the pre-sale opening shortly afterwards. Any remaining tickets were due to be released in a general sale. Raye emphasised that she wanted fans to be able to buy tickets at face value rather than see them resold at inflated prices. The Royal Albert Hall said it invests heavily in protecting its ticketing systems from automated attacks and regularly blocks millions of bot requests, but argued that legislation needs to keep pace with increasingly sophisticated touting operations. The episode has renewed attention on the use of bots in live-event ticket sales and on calls for stronger consumer protections and regulation of the secondary ticket market.

Raye has revealed that her team is working to identify 'real fans' ahead of tickets going on sale for her upcoming Royal Albert Hall show, following nearly 2 million sign-ups and a system overwhelmed by scalpers using AI bots. The singer announced a special one-off show at the historic London venue to reimagine her album 'This Music May Contain Hope' with an orchestra, set for October 23. Tickets for the 'This Symphony May Contain Hope' event were scheduled for pre-sale on October 13, but the sign-up process was flooded with fake registrations created by AI bots, resulting in 1.8 million sign-ups for only 5,000 seats. Raye stated that the situation has 'opened her eyes' to the scale of bot activity in ticketing, emphasizing the importance of ensuring fans can purchase tickets at face value. Her team is now manually reviewing the sign-up list to identify genuine fans, who will receive a pre-sale link and code by email by 11:45am on October 13. Those not selected will have access to general sale starting October 15 at 10am. Banquet Records, the label behind Raye's music, also highlighted the growing issue of bots on their bigger shows, urging fans to become registered users to help differentiate from bots. The government has been working on legislation to cap secondary ticket prices and crack down on scalpers, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirming efforts would be outlined in the King's Speech. Despite promises, a draft bill was only recently shared, and the new government under Andy Burnham has announced a £45 million investment to support the music industry and combat ticket touts. Raye's experience underscores the increasing challenges in ticketing systems and the need for more robust solutions to protect fans from exploitation by scalpers using AI technology.

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