Global superstar Raye has broken her silence after sign-ups for a one-off show in London led to a situation she never saw coming. Raye announced she would be accompanied by her band, The Heritage Orchestra and the Flames Collective choir at the iconic Royal Albert Hall on October 23 for a one-night-only symphonic reimagining of her album, This Music May Contain Hope.
1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 seats
Tickets for the event were due to go on sale on Thursday, October 15 following a sign-up process, but after the BRIT-award winner set the link live, she ran into a problem she never saw coming. Despite there only being 5,000 tickets available, the star received 1.8 million sign-ups mostly from scalpers using AI bots.
Raye and her team posted on Instagram to say they had "never witnessed bots on this scale" before making the decision to change the way they would be allocating tickets.
Manual review of sign-up list
The post said: "We received 1.8 million sign-ups for 5,000 seats for This Symphony May Contain Hope. 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. 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."
"Those selected will receive their presale link and code by email on Tuesday at 11:45am BST. Presale will open at 12pm. If you do not receive a presale code, the remaining tickets will be available to all on general sale."
"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."
Fans demand in-person ticket sales
Following the post, hundreds of fans of the Grammy-nominated artists flooded the comments section to support the star - while also making one demand for future events.
One person said: "I know everyone really appreciates you and your team trying your best to make everything as fair and accessible as possible. Hoping that someday soon this will be less stressful and ticketing can get some proper legal oversight. So that fans don't continue to be exploited by this system."
A second said: "Thank you for highlighting these issues and finding solutions. Hoping I receive a presale code and see you there next week."
A third demanded: "BRING BACK INPERSON TICKET SALES." While a fourth said: "In person ticket sales would save the world."
