Raye and her team have changed how tickets will be distributed for her one-off Royal Albert Hall concert after 1.8 million sign-ups flooded in for just 5,000 seats, which they said were largely driven by scalpers using AI bots.
The show, titled This Symphony May Contain Hope, is scheduled for October 23 at the London venue, featuring Raye alongside her band, The Heritage Orchestra and the Flames Collective choir. It will offer a symphonic reinterpretation of her album, This Music May Contain Hope. Tickets were due to go on sale on Thursday, October 15, following a registration process.
Raye's Instagram statement on the ticket process
In a statement on Instagram, Raye and her team said they had "never witnessed bots on this scale" and announced a change in how tickets would be sold. The post explained: "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."
The statement continued: "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, with the presale opening at 12pm. If fans do not receive a presale code, the remaining tickets will be available to all on general sale.
Fans respond with calls for in-person ticket sales
Raye added: "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."
Following the post, hundreds of fans 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."
