Sam Fender has confirmed that he had to delay the pre-sale for his upcoming Newcastle shows because of a “sophisticated bot attack”.
The South Shields singer announced his 2027 ‘Proper Massive Stadium Tour’ last week, which will include two homecoming shows at Newcastle’s St James’ Park in June, before visiting Cardiff, London, Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester. Support at the UK stadium dates comes from Wunderhorse.
Already, the tour has been making headlines, with the singer-songwriter expressing his frustration with the “inflated” ticket prices, and also working to make admission more affordable and scrap premium front-standing tickets.
Now, the pre-sale for his two homecoming shows has been pushed back following a “sophisticated bot attack” reportedly affecting a ticketing site.
Initially, tickets for the St James’ Park shows were set to go live yesterday morning (Wednesday October 28), however this was then pushed back to this morning (Thursday October 29) at 9.30am due to concerns over bots.
Statement: Sam Fender at St James’ Park, Newcastle
If you have a confirmed order, you do not need to do anything.
Further information can be found on our website: https://t.co/PNEOxT3rde pic.twitter.com/nc4sLHGyMe
— Gigantic Tickets (@Gigantic) October 28, 2026
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Gigantic Tickets confirmed that they had found an “unusually high volume of suspicious activity” on the site and were facing error messages as a result. Fender then confirmed to fans that the pre-sale date would be changed as a result, and would therefore lead to more “real fans” getting tickets.
“Being told that there’s been a sophisticated bot attack to the Gigantic ticket site which is impacting the St James’ Park pre-sale,” he wrote. “We’re going to have to move the Newcastle pre-sale to 9:30 tomorrow to ensure real fans get the tickets.”
Gigantic also shared a statement apologising for the inconvenience, writing: “We know how frustrating this morning was for many of you, and we’re sorry. Fans should be able to buy tickets fairly, and that is what we’re working to make sure happens.”
It appears that it was only the Newcastle shows that were impacted by the “bot attack”, and pre-sales for other dates, including the slots at Wembley Stadium, went ahead unaffected.
The issues affecting Fender’s tour pre-sale are similar to those that led to Raye also pushing back her ticket sale for the special one-off show she held at the historic London venue last week, where she reimagined her album ‘This Music May Contain Hope’ with an orchestra.
She announced that she was taking steps to help “real fans” get tickets to the show, after there were “1.8 million sign-ups for 5000 seats,” and the “process was overwhelmed by scalpers, using Al bots to create hundreds of thousands of fake registrations.”
There have been multiple efforts to crack down on the rise of ticket touts in recent years, and earlier this year former Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to “stamp out ticket touts for good” in a letter to live music fans, as exclusively revealed by NME.
In January last year, the government also announced that it would impose a price cap on how much touts can resell tickets for, and also launch an official consultation into the industry and controversial ‘dynamic pricing’ practices. The consultation ran from January 10 until April 4, but by last November no concrete plans had been announced, spurring the likes of Radiohead, Sam Fender, Dua Lipa, and more to call on the government to keep their promise.
Eventually, the government announced its plan to introduce a price cap on secondary ticket sales in a bid to “protect fans from rip-off prices” and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told NME that the efforts would be outlined in the King’s Speech before “becoming law”. There was widespread disappointment back in May when the government shared news of only a draft bill to stamp out secondary ticketing in the King’s speech.
More recently, Andy Burnham has become PM and announced details of a £45million investment to “turn up” the music industry and crack down on scalpers. Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts and for Digital Government and Data Ian Murray MP assured NME that they’re working hard to deliver the aforementioned policy this year.
