The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo says their ticketing system was attacked by 838,000 bots as fans waited online Thursday to get in to see their favorite 2019 shows.
CEO Joel Cowley called the attack devastating and apologized for the inconvenience.
Some people had gotten into the virtual waiting room plenty early to snap up the good seats, waiting patiently for the hour to arrive, only to get kicked out of the system.
Cowley says when the bots attacked, the ticketing company, AXS.com, was able to isolate the hundreds of thousands of autonomous programs on one of their 50 servers and quarantined them, but also quarantined some legitimate human beings in the process, who weren’t able to purchase the tickets they had been waiting so long to get.
It seems the bots were targeting two of the biggest shows in this year’s lineup, George Strait and Cardi B.
It’s a challenge for the Rodeo to master next year, though by then the bots will be smarter, too.
In addition to the to biggest headliners, this year’s HLSR concert lineup includes Kasey Musgrave, Tim McGraw, Brooks and Dunn and many others.