Football fans looking to secure tickets for Kenya's high-profile clash against Madagascar were met with delays and frustration after the Mookh-owned online ticketing portal crashed just hours after opening on Tuesday.
But as soon as sales went live, the rush to secure seats caused the system to collapse, with the company blaming automated bots for overwhelming its servers.
CAF had initially announced that sales would begin at 12 pm on August 19, 2025, before later adjusting the start time to 1 pm.
Mookh would then seek patience from frustrated supporters in a statement, "Our team is actively working to stop this so that tickets can go to genuine fans, not bots."
But what exactly are bots, and why do they matter in ticket sales?
A bot, short for "robot", is a software program that automates online tasks at lightning speed.
Unlike humans, bots can refresh, click, and purchase repeatedly without pause. Some are beneficial.
MaFANS!!! Poleni ... our team is working hard to resolve this. Tickets will be back on sale soon. #MOOKHTEAM pic.twitter.com/sILLMdZG0N - MOOKH. (@MookhAfrica) August 19, 2025
Google uses them to index websites, while businesses deploy chatbots to provide quick customer support.
However, not all bots are benign.
Ticketing bots, in particular, are notorious for flooding platforms as soon as sales open, buying up tickets in bulk.
These are later resold at inflated prices on the black market, a practice known as "scalping."
This global problem has now found its way into Kenyan football.
Kasarani Stadium has a 48,000-seat capacity, but due to previous security breaches, CAF restricted attendance to 27,000 for all of Kenya's matches.
With ticket prices raised from Sh200 to Sh250, demand was already high. Despite the portal crash, tickets were declared sold out within just 15 minutes-a speed that strongly suggests automated buying.
Globally, bots have sparked outrage in major events. In January, chaos erupted during Taylor Swift's Eras Tour when Ticketmaster's system buckled under unprecedented demand.
"We were hit with three times the amount of bot traffic than we had ever experienced," Live Nation president Joe Berchtold admitted during a US Senate hearing.
The attack forced Ticketmaster to slow down and even pause sales.
To counter such problems, event organizers and ticketing firms employ several strategies.
CAPTCHA tests, which require buyers to prove they are human by clicking images or solving puzzles, are widely used.
Other measures include limiting the number of tickets per purchase, monitoring unusual buying behavior, and deploying artificial intelligence to detect and block suspicious traffic in real-time.
Some systems also issue unique access codes to pre-registered fans, minimizing the risk of bots taking over.
In countries such as the US and UK, laws have been introduced to ban ticket bots and penalize their misuse.
Enforcement, however, remains difficult as bot technology continues to evolve.
