Earlier this month British singer-songwriter Raye planned on holding an intimate one-night concert for her fans.
The event was overwhelmed with 1.8 million sign-ups for tickets to a venue with a capacity for just 5,000 fans. Raye later revealed the show, which was set for Oct. 23, was overrun with fake registrations by bots.
“Sadly our sign-up process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using AI bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations,” Raye wrote on her X account. “It’s a new world we are living in now, I have never witnessed bots on this scale.”
Fast forward to just over a week later and now country legend Garth Brooks is dealing with a similar situation.
Garth Brooks Issues Statement for Fans
Brooks announced that ticket sales for his third show in Kansas City were shut down due to excessive bot activity.
“The bot situation is out of hand. It’s been progressively getting worse on this tour. With that said, my concern is for the people who managed to buy tickets today for the third show in Kansas City before the bots crashed the on sale,” the two-time Grammy winner said.
In the message for fans, he apologized for the issue and promised to “personally look into what can be done” regarding bot issues with ticket sales.
Resellers have been a constant problem for the music industry, but the rise of AI makes the process even easier.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors accused a San Diego-based entertainment company of using bots and other illegal means to scoop up millions of tickets to hot events such as concerts for Beyoncé, Post Malone, Pitbull, and Luke Bryan, then reselling the tickets in bulk for a profit.
Rolling Stone revealed the Justice Department said REPS & Co sidestepped ticket limits for at least 83,000 events, shelling out more than $1.3 billion for a staggering 18.5 million tickets while raking in at least $120.8 million in profits.
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