Raye Says Scalpers Used AI Bots to “Overwhelm” Sign Ups For Royal Albert Hall Show as 1.8 Million Register For Tickets
Raye says AI-powered bots created hundreds of thousands of fake registrations for her upcoming Royal Albert Hall concert, overwhelming the sign-up process. Her team is manually reviewing applications to identify genuine fans and help ensure tickets are sold at face value.
The one-off show, titled *This Symphony May Contain Hope*, has 5,000 tickets but attracted 1.8 million registrations. Raye said the team chose not to risk opening a presale that scalpers might exploit. The incident highlights wider concerns about ticket resale and affordability in live music, as some US jurisdictions pursue limits on resale prices.
- Raye says bots generated hundreds of thousands of fake sign-ups.
- 1.8 million people registered for a 5,000-capacity concert.
- Her team is checking registrations to prioritise genuine fans.
New here? Start with this
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert venue in London, and Raye is a British singer-songwriter. Her one-off show, This Symphony May Contain Hope, has 5,000 tickets, while 1.8 million people registered for the chance to buy one.
Ticket scalpers buy tickets to resell, often at higher prices. Automated bots can submit large numbers of registrations quickly, making it harder to distinguish genuine fans from people seeking tickets for resale. Raye’s team is reviewing registrations by hand and chose not to hold a presale.
The issue matters because high resale prices can put live music beyond some fans’ budgets. In the United States, some local and state authorities are pursuing limits on how much tickets can be resold for.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Manually reviewing registrations could help distinguish genuine fans from automated applications and give more people a chance to buy tickets at face value. With far more registrations than seats, and a risk that bots could exploit a presale, extra checks may be a reasonable way to protect access and limit scalping.
The case against
Manual review can be slow and opaque, and genuine fans may be wrongly excluded while applicants have little recourse. Some may argue that clear, consistently applied rules and transparent ticket allocation would be fairer than case-by-case decisions, even if no process can meet demand for a show with so few seats.