Raye says scalpers used AI bots to create “hundreds of thousands of fake registrations” for the presale of her upcoming one-off show at London’s Royal Albert Hall.
The British artist said in a post shared on Instagram and X today (October 13) that the presale had received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 seats.
Presale registration for the show ran through a sign-up page hosted by fan marketing platform co:brand.
To stop scalpers exploiting the presale, Raye said her team had chosen to “manually review the sign-up list” and shortlist “people we believe are real fans.”
The concert, titled This Symphony May Contain Hope, takes place on October 23.
Raye is set to perform her second album, This Music May Contain Hope, in full at the show, reimagined with The Heritage Orchestra and Flames Collective.
The co:brand page told fans that sign-ups would close at 5pm BST on Monday (October 12), with presale codes to be sent by email this morning.
“We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope,” Raye wrote. “Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.
“It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale.”
“Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations. It is a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale.”
Raye
Added Raye: “It is so important to me that fans can buy tickets at the face value price. Therefore rather than risk opening a presale that scalpers could exploit, we felt the best and safest solution for this specific show was to manually review the sign-up list to identify a shortlist of people we believe are real fans.”
Raye said those selected would receive their presale link and code by email at 11:45am BST today, ahead of the presale opening at 12pm.
“If you do not receive a presale code, the remaining tickets will be available to all on general sale,” Raye added.
General sale opens on Thursday (October 15) at 10am, according to a listing on Live Nation‘s UK website.
Raye ended her post: “I’m not sure what the future holds for ticketing, I do know this experience has really opened my eyes. Me and my team are going to think really hard about what we can do in the future. Lots of love, Raye.”
The show is promoted by Metropolis Music, according to live music publication IQ.
The presale was pushed back by two hours to allow time for the manual review, the outlet reported.
Presale registration on co:brand closed on Monday, with the presale itself running on the Royal Albert Hall’s own ticketing website today.
The queue page on the Royal Albert Hall site was titled “RAYE Artist & O2 Pre-sale Waiting Room.”
Once the presale opened, the Royal Albert Hall‘s website received 5 million access requests, a spokesperson for the venue told IQ.
According to IQ, that ranked “among the highest levels of presale activity the venue has ever seen.”
Fans trying to buy tickets were unable to complete their purchases for 45 minutes, prompting an “urgent investigation” into the cause, the publication added.
co:brand, which handled the artist presale sign-up, describes itself as a music marketing platform for record labels, artists, and creators.
Its Drops product lets artists build customizable pages that collect fan contact details and other data, with use cases including event sign-ups and ticketing, according to the company’s website.
Case studies listed on co:brand‘s site include campaigns for Disclosure, Chase & Status, and Myles Smith.
Raye‘s post did not name co:brand.
co:brand declined to comment when contacted by MBW.
The singer previously played a one-night orchestral show at the Royal Albert Hall in 2023, backed by The Heritage Orchestra and Flames Collective.
That performance was filmed for Live At The Royal Albert Hall, which was nominated for Best Music Film at the 68th Grammy Awards.
Raye releases music independently via Human Re Sources, the distribution and services company that Sony Music acquired in 2020 and which operates within The Orchard.
She signed with Human Re Sources in 2022, after parting ways with Universal‘s Polydor.
In 2024, she won a record six BRIT Awards.
A Royal Albert Hall spokesperson told the BBC that the venue “invest[s] heavily” in protecting its ticketing systems from “automated attacks,” but that the “law needs to catch up.”
In a July 2024 post on its website, the Hall said it blocks “millions of bot requests,” and that it had recently blocked more than 38 million in a single 24-hour period.
The comments from Raye and the venue come as the UK government prepares legislation to ban the resale of tickets above face value.
In November 2025, the government announced plans to make it illegal to resell tickets to live events above face value, and to cap the fees charged by resale platforms.
The plans would also bar individuals from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy on the primary market – a measure aimed at the use of bots to buy tickets in bulk during on-sales, MBW reported at the time.
“For too long, ticket touts have ripped off fans, using bots to snap up batches of tickets and resell them at sky-high prices,” Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said in a statement at the time.
In May, the measures were included in the King’s Speech as a draft Ticket Tout Ban Bill.
As a draft bill, it is subject to pre-legislative scrutiny and further consultation before it can be formally introduced to Parliament.Music Business Worldwide