Raye combats AI bot surge for Royal Albert Hall concert

British singer-songwriter Raye reported that her upcoming performance at London's Royal Albert Hall was targeted by hundreds of thousands of AI bots. For a show with only 5,000 available seats, there were approximately 1.8 million sign-ups, many of which were identified as fake registrations used by ticket touts.

To combat this, Raye’s team implemented a manual review process of the sign-up list to identify genuine fans and provide them with pre-sale access, aiming to ensure tickets are sold at face value. The Royal Albert Hall noted that while they employ measures against automated attacks, legislation needs to evolve to address these issues.

In response, the secondary ticketing platform Viagogo described the manual review process as “absurd.” Viagogo argued that bot activity primarily occurs on primary ticketing platforms and called for a market overhaul. The company is advocating for an “open distribution” model, similar to airline ticketing, to increase competition and tackle bot activity at its source.