From Music Business Worldwide · · 1m
Raye's Ticket Scam
Raye reveals scalpers used AI bots to create fake registrations for 5,000 Royal Albert Hall seats.
In brief
Raye reveals scalpers used AI bots to create fake registrations for 5,000 Royal Albert Hall seats. Raye says AI bots generated hundreds of thousands of fake registrations for her Royal Albert Hall presale, leading to manual review of 1.8 million sign-ups. Originally reported by Music Business Worldwide.
Raye's Presale Overload
Raye reported 1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 Royal Albert Hall seats during presale.
“We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope”
AI Bot Scams
Scalpers used AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations for presale.
“Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations”
Manual Review Process
Raye's team manually reviewed sign-ups to identify real fans before presale.
“It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price”
Presale Timeline
Presale closed Monday at 5pm BST with codes sent by email by 11:45am BST today.
“Raye said those selected would receive their presale link and code by email at 11:45am BST today”
Ticketing Chaos
Royal Albert Hall's site received 5 million access requests during presale spike.
“Once the presale opened, the Royal Albert Hall's website received 5 million access requests”
Government Action
UK government plans to ban ticket resales above face value by November 2025.
“In November 2025, the government announced plans to make it illegal to resell tickets to live events above face value”
Future Plans
Raye and team will rethink ticketing after this presale experience.
“I’m not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes”
In short
Raye says AI bots generated hundreds of thousands of fake registrations for her Royal Albert Hall presale, leading to manual review of 1.8 million sign-ups.
