AI agents are revolutionizing ticket buying by acting as personal concierges, navigating complex markets to find the best deals. This shift from searching to commanding faces resistance from marketplaces like Amazon, who see it as a threat. The future promises personalized fan experiences but raises concerns about price transparency and trust.
AI Companies Want to Change How You Buy Tickets
Read original at Sportico.com →Buying tickets has never been more complicated. Brokers sell tickets they don’t actually own. What appear to be secondary market stubs may actually be coming from the team hosting the event itself. There’s a growing array of official marketplaces, partner platforms and third-party sites to navigate in search of a decent deal.
But what if AI could solve all that? Hey ChatGPT, I want two tickets to tonight’s game. I’m willing to spend $100. Go forth… Google announced exactly that use case last week as AI competitors tout so-called “agentic capabilities”—features that allow the bots to perform actions online in addition to spouting back information on demand.
A Google AI Mode search for Brooklyn Nets tickets returned results ranging from $25 to $1,253 from five different companies. But, could it really be so easy? And, if people are going to let AI buy tickets, what will become of the ticket marketplaces? For companies like SeatGeek, StubHub, Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats, appearing at the top of related Google search results can be critical for success.
As a result, they spend hundreds of millions in advertising, reportedly paying up to $8-per-click. But many websites are now seeing drops in Google-based visitor numbers as the platform’s AI Overviews and competitors like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude deliver their own answers. In a recent report, Activate Consulting estimated that generative AI platforms would be the first-stop search tool used by 72 million Americans by 2029.
Right now, the tech is already playing that role for 34 million adults in the U.S., the group said. Naturally, ticketing platforms are now aiming to be the top result there, too. That can take nefarious forms, such as hypothetically hard-coding cheaper ticket prices into the site that are hidden to human users but visible to AI bots, making the platform seem like a more affordable option to the computer model.
But there are more above-board strategies too. SeatGeek co-founder Eric Waller said the company has refined its rules around bots while still restricting them to prevent scalpers from coming in and automatically buying valuable seats. “Now there are sort of good bots and bad bots,” Waller said. The company is also emphasizing user reviews and images to give AI more information to work with while signing deals to be the official platform for certain teams.
“What everyone complains about with Google’s maybe decline in quality is, ‘Oh, the ad auction model just drove things away from what users actually want,’” Waller said. “Our hope in many ways is that… if AI is really doing a better job, [it’s recommending] the site which is the official one and which has all the fans posting inventory directly to it and has the best reviews.
” StubHub is among the companies collaborating with OpenAI directly since its debut of Operator in January, which promises to perform actions online. In October, OpenAI released its own browser, Atlas, with a built-in “agent mode” that could complete tasks like shopping. Google’s AI Mode update includes SeatGeek, StubHub and Ticketmaster as partners.
TickPick CMO Matt Ferrel says he’s also spoken with most of the major AI players. “We’re talking to them directly,” he said, “trying to figure out, is there consumer improvement? Is there transaction improvement?” Still, in a highly competitive market, there will always be pressure to game the system.
One point of vulnerability is ticket platforms’ deal quality scores. A search for Nets tickets on ChatGPT returned Vivid Seats options first, seemingly because the site designated three options as 10.0 scores, while StubHub’s top collected choices maxed out at 9.0. Inflating those numbers could apparently allow a ticket provider to rank higher in ChatGPT’s summary, even if the ultimate result is more customer confusion.
“In the best-case scenario, it’s great, and it’s democratic, and it uses information and consumer insights,” Ferrel said. “In the worst-case scenario, people are gaming it. People are identifying the holes and trying to use illegitimate tactics.” There’s also a chance that AI buying tools further flatten the market.
If access to the same seats is available at an identical price across ticket marketplaces, tickets become more like a commodity, and it becomes more difficult for platforms to monetize their offerings. “People aren’t paying enough attention to how fast this is coming and how negatively this is going to impact the secondary ticketing marketplaces,” Jump CEO and co-founder Jordy Leiser said.
Jump, which helps two NWSL teams and the Minnesota Timberwolves/Lynx manage tickets and other fan experience elements, operates as a service provider to franchises rather than a consumer marketplace. “What happens in commodity markets? Margin goes to zero.” Design differences matter less when a bot is doing the work.
Valuable customer data and marketing opportunities dwindle. “I think that’s an inevitability,” Leiser said. Those changes aren’t just coming for ticketing, either. Last week, Amazon sued AI startup Perplexity over a browser feature that automated purchasing products from Amazon’s site. If AIs begin handling purchases for large numbers of people, Ferrel said, “You start going, like, alright, well, would an Amazon exist?
Any marketplace that’s two-sided, all of a sudden you go, ‘Does any of this matter anymore?’” “It’s a fear for sure,” he said, adding, “That’s a pretty massive swing and I don’t think it’ll be done lightly.” Given where ticket prices are now, Waller said, fans are still going to want to review detailed listings before making a purchase.
Ticket marketplaces that offer more functionality beyond a simple database of listings are more likely to retain customer loyalty. “Whoever really builds the best mousetrap and makes the purchase flow extremely easy and secure and trusted, is where people are going to continue to go back,” Two Circles SVP Taylor Kern said.
In particular, provider assurances could make fans more comfortable relative to trusting a chatbot’s call. “You still want to feel like what you bought is guaranteed,” Ferrel said. Sites could begin incorporating AI into their platforms too, making it easier to quickly find the best seat for any given fan.
“Where this is going is, I live in Minneapolis, I have kids, I talk to ChatGPT all day, and it suggested I go to a Wolves game,” Leiser said. “And as I go through that process, every single thing about that experience—not just where I sit, but also what to read ahead of time—all of it is 1-to-1 personalized to me and my family.
” Go to enough sporting events, and you’re sure to get burned by tickets. The days of counterfeit printouts are—thank heavens—largely behind us, but fans are still often left empty-handed on game days or arrive to find seats that were not as good as advertised. Even more commonly, attendees find out that the peers next to them got their tickets for a lot less.
In offering a new path through the digital maze that stands between any fan and their favorite team’s front gate, AI chatbots are likely to pick up users. Fans are eager for a better way. But one question remains: Can they deliver on their promise?
