Raye says AI bots made hundreds of thousands of fake sign-ups for 5,000-seat show

British singer Raye said on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 that the fan sign-up for her one-night show at London's Royal Albert Hall had been "overwhelmed" by ticket touts using AI bots. In a statement to fans, she said the sign-up drew 1.8 million registrations for about 5,000 seats, and that hundreds of thousands of them were fake accounts created by bots. Instead of sending a presale code to everyone on the list, her team said it would check the registrations by hand and email codes only to people it believed were real fans, with any remaining tickets going on general sale afterwards. The concert, billed as This Symphony May Contain Hope, is scheduled for October 23.

Fan "sign-up" schemes were meant to fix a familiar problem. Instead of a free-for-all when tickets go on sale, artists ask fans to register in advance, then send codes to a selection of them, so that touts cannot simply buy everything in the first minute and resell it at a markup. Raye's experience shows that the same AI tools ordinary people use to write emails and fill in forms can also create fake identities by the hundred thousand. A sign-up form that asks only for a name and an email address is easy for an automated script to flood.

What her team has fallen back on is the oldest defence of all: human judgement. Checking hundreds of thousands of entries by hand is slow and imperfect, and some real fans will inevitably be missed. But it reflects a wider shift. Online services are increasingly treating any process that can be completed without proof of a real person as open to abuse, and are turning to stronger checks such as verified phone numbers, purchase histories or identity tools. Each of those adds friction for genuine users and raises privacy questions.

The venue's own figures show the scale. Blocking more than 38 million bot requests in a day means automated traffic can outnumber human visitors many times over. The Royal Albert Hall said strong demand for artists such as Raye creates openings for professional touts to exploit fans. In the UK, the government has said it intends to stop tickets being resold above their face value plus unavoidable fees, with large fines for platforms that break the rules, but that plan is still a draft bill going through scrutiny.

For young fans in India, the lesson travels. Big concert tours by Indian and international artists now use presales, queues and registration windows too, and touts work the same way everywhere. Buying only from the official seller, distrusting offers on social media and messaging apps, and never sharing a presale code or one-time password are basic protections.

Short-term: Many real fans will not get a presale code for the October 23 concert, and those who miss out will have to try the general sale on October 15 or go without.

Long-term: Artists and ticket sellers are likely to add stronger checks to sign-ups, such as verified phone numbers or fan histories, and pressure will grow on governments to finish laws against resale above face value.

Who is affected: Concert-goers and fans who register for presales, artists and their management, venues and ticketing companies, and the touts and resale platforms whose business depends on reselling tickets above their original price.

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