Brief
Raye says ticket sign‑up for Royal Albert Hall show swamped by AI bots
The pop star received 1.8 million registrations for 5,000 seats and will now manually verify fans before releasing presale codes.
By Felo News Desk · Published
Pop singer Raye announced that the registration process for her one‑off Royal Albert Hall concert on 23 October was overwhelmed by automated bot activity.
What happened
Raye’s team opened a sign‑up for 5,000 seats and recorded more than 1.8 million entries, according to the artist’s Instagram post on 13 October. The volume of registrations far exceeded the venue’s capacity and, as the artist explained, many of the entries were generated by artificial‑intelligence bots.
What the reports add
Standard.co.uk noted that the artist’s team decided to cancel the planned presale and instead conduct a manual review of the list to identify genuine fans. Independent.co.uk reported that the manual review will produce a shortlist that will receive a presale link and code by email on the same day at 11:45 pm BST, with the presale opening at noon.
What was said
Raye wrote on Instagram, “We received 1.8 million sign‑ups for 5,000 seats… Sadly our sign‑up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.” She added, “It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale,” and emphasized the importance of fans buying tickets at face value.
How it came about
The artist, known for her Brit Award‑winning hits, announced the concert titled This Symphony May Contain Hope earlier this month. The surge in bot registrations mirrors broader concerns in the live‑music industry about automated ticket‑scalping, a topic previously covered by Felo News in its report on Ed Sheeran’s ticket‑sale challenges (Sheeran ticket controversy).
Key facts
- Raye received 1.8 million sign‑ups for 5,000 seats at her Royal Albert Hall concert. (standard.co.uk)
- The artist’s team will manually review registrations to identify real fans. (independent.co.uk)
- Fans selected by the review will receive a presale link and code by email on 13 October at 11:45 pm BST. (independent.co.uk)
Sources
- [1] standard.co.uk
- [2] independent.co.uk
