The Battle Against AI Ticket Bots

There’s a new fighter entering the battle for concert tickets: AI. Fans have long been accustomed to scalpers buying up tickets and reselling them at inflated prices, but now AI bots are preventing legitimate buyers from purchasing tickets altogether.

One artist affected by this issue, Garth Brooks. The country superstar added another show on November 7 in Kansas City after his two previously scheduled performances sold out. When tickets for the new show went on sale through AXS on October 23, the queue quickly filled with 90,000 users, soon discovered to be spam bots. After the issue was identified, the venue shut down ticket sales and canceled the show. Refunds were distributed to fans who had successfully purchased tickets.

Other artists have experienced similar issues with ticket sales. Sam Fender postponed presale tickets for two stadium shows in his hometown after discovering a significant number of bot attacks on the ticketing platform, Gigantic. Similarly, AI bots flooded the ticketing server for RAYE’s Royal Albert Hall concert in London after an unusual 1.8 million registrations were recorded for a venue that holds only 5,000 people.

Laws have been introduced to prevent these issues and protect fans’ ability to purchase legitimate tickets. One example is the BOTS Act, passed in the United States in 2016, which prohibits bypassing security measures on ticketing websites. However, enforcement efforts and technological defenses are still struggling to keep up with the problem.