Pop star Raye criticised ticket scalpers on Monday, October 12. They overwhelmed the sign-up process for her upcoming London show.
The London-born singer-songwriter said resellers used AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.
Raye will perform at London’s Royal Albert Hall on October 23. The one-off show offers just 5,000 seats.
However, scalpers flooded the online sign-up process with fake accounts. They hoped to resell tickets at inflated prices.
As a result, thousands of fans struggled to secure tickets. The incident also sparked anger online and among the public.
‘It is a new world we are living in now’, Raye says
“We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope,” Raye wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday morning.
“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,” the artist explained, sharing her own disbelief.
The priority, Raye explained, was to make sure fans could buy tickets at the original price.
For this reason, the artist and her team decided to “manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans,” she stated.
“I’m not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes,” Raye commented.
“Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future,” she concluded.
Artists ask for protection
Monday’s episode was not the first related to the issue.
Back in November 2025, over 40 artists had signed an open letter to then-British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to seek help against ticket touts.
Artists such as Dua Lipa, Radiohead and Coldplay had solicited Starmer to protect fans from online ticket reselling.
Among one of the most resounding incidents was Oasis’s 2025 tour.
At the time, tickets were extensively bought and resold by scalpers, with some admissions reaching over £4,000 each.
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