Supercharged’ AI Bots Are Disrupting the Ticketing Market. The Industry Is Desperate for a Solution
RAYE and Sam Fender have both had ticket sales disrupted in recent weeks.
London’s Royal Albert Hall, a renowned venue for both classical and pop music, recently faced a digital storm when pop sensation RAYE announced an exclusive one-off show on October 23. The act claimed that artificial intelligence bots had infiltrated the presale process, flooding the platform with an astounding 1.8 million registrations for just 5,000 seats.
In an effort to bring legitimacy back to ticket sales, RAYE’s team painstakingly reviewed each registration to ensure only genuine fans could secure tickets. A similar predicament befell Sam Fender last week when a presale for his upcoming stadium tour was disrupted by a "sophisticated bot attack" on the ticketing site Gigantic.
The artist moved the presale by 24 hours in an attempt to allow genuine fans to purchase tickets. As live music and ticketing become the latest battleground in the AI war, the industry is desperate for a solution to this disruptive force. The U.K. music sector generated a staggering £11.2 billion ($15.04 billion) in 2025, with 24.7 million music tourists attending events that year.
The rise of bots has prompted calls for the government to intervene, with the Labour Party pledging to cap the resale of tickets for large cultural events at face value. Despite this pledge, the proposed legislation remains in draft form and is unlikely to feature in the upcoming parliamentary session until 2027. Artists such as The Cure, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, and Radiohead have all expressed support for the move, but the issue remains unresolved.
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