vivenu summit puts fragmented fan data at center of ticketing's AI push. Home " vivenu summit puts fragmented fan data at center of ticketing's AI push. By Dave Clark 25 days ago Live entertainment's push to bring artificial intelligence into ticketing, marketing and fan engagement is running into a decidedly less futuristic obstacle: many organizations still cannot get a unified view of the customer data they already have. That was a recurring theme at vivenu's AI Summit, an invitation-only event hosted by the ticketing technology company at its New York offices Sept. 17. The event brought together more than 100 senior leaders from ticketing, sponsorship and fan engagement, with speakers from StubHub, OVG360, Playfly Sports, WMT Digital, Breadcrumb, Minerva, Next League and other companies. Across three panels focused on The AI-Ready Revenue Stack for Sports & Entertainment, speakers repeatedly pointed to data spread among ticketing, CRM, premium seating, sponsorship, food and beverage, retail and digital platforms as a barrier to putting AI to practical use, according to event materials supplied to TicketNews after the summit. The problem can exist even at relatively sophisticated organizations. During the opening panel, speakers said some large-market teams are still managing portions of their data through Excel and Google Sheets, while some smaller organizations have moved further toward extracting and acting on customer insights. That creates a significant gap between what current AI systems are capable of doing and what many live entertainment organizations are positioned to actually use them for. Marcus Ellison, CEO and co-founder of Breadcrumb, cautioned against starting with AI itself rather than a business problem that needs to be solved. "It's a huge mistake to have an AI strategy that's just 'Let's see what AI can do,'" Ellison said. "If you don't have a specific use-case in mind, AI will give you the wrong answer 90% of the time." Ticketing platforms compete to become the data layer. The discussion comes as ticketing technology companies increasingly position their platforms not simply as systems for processing transactions, but as the underlying data infrastructure from which organizers can run marketing, analytics and AI applications. That is a direction vivenu has been moving toward directly. The company launched vivenu Engage in June, adding segmentation, campaign creation, consent management and other customer relationship tools directly to its ticketing platform rather than requiring organizers to move that information into separate systems. The company followed that in July with an AI suite built to query live ticketing data, create reports and customer segments, and assist with marketing campaigns. vivenu says its AI Assistant draws from an organizer's first-party data as well as a ticketing-specific knowledge base. At the summit, vivenu CTO and co-founder Jens Teichert said 48% of vivenu users who have tried the AI Assistant are now using it daily, according to figures supplied by the company. He argued that simply attaching an AI interface to existing software is not enough. "It's not enough to bolt agentic capability on top of an API - it actually has to work," Teichert said. "vivenu's platform is built on a context layer - a knowledge base that understands the product, the industry, and the context of your business." Teichert also emphasized data ownership, saying vivenu does not believe customer information should be used to train its own models or turned into a competitive advantage for another organization. The broader idea is not unique to vivenu. TicketNews has covered an increasingly competitive push among technology providers to unify the data sitting underneath AI applications. Jump, for example, introduced an agentic AI suite earlier this year around a platform combining ticketing, marketing, messaging, fan identity and other customer information into what the company calls a single source of truth. Accesso similarly launched an intelligence product following its acquisition of Dexibit that connects data from ticketing, retail, operations and other systems. The emerging competition suggests AI may make the architecture underneath a ticketing platform increasingly important. An organizer can have access to the same general-purpose AI models as its competitors while getting very different results depending on what customer information those models can see, how current it is and whether systems can connect a fan's activity across different parts of the business. Personalization without automating the experience away. The summit also highlighted a second question that becomes more important once organizations solve the data problem: Just because something can be automated or personalized does not necessarily mean it should be. A panel featuring StubHub Director of Product and Strategy Rob Tomlinson, Wolf Cycle co-founder and partner Scott Kornfield and 3DDV Chief Revenue Officer Francis Casado focused on growing consumer expectations for personalization. Live events increasingly compete for attention against digital products that already tailor recommendations around individual users, speakers said. Better customer data can allow teams and venues to identify particular interests and connect buyers with theme nights, premium products or other event experiences rather than treating an entire audience as a single customer segment. The final panel - featuring OVG Alliance and OVG360 Co-Chairman Peter Luukko, Playfly Sports President Chris Marinak and Next League Chief AI & Innovation Officer Shripal Shah - emphasized limits as much as opportunities. Speakers pointed to repetitive work as an obvious starting point for AI, particularly at smaller organizations where automation can expand what a limited staff can accomplish. One example involved AI-powered live translation allowing a single production to be adapted into dozens of broadcasts. Other parts of the live-event experience may benefit from remaining inefficient. The panel used baseball umpiring as an example: AI could theoretically make calls faster and more consistently, but removing the human umpire could also change an element of the experience that fans associate with attending a game. "Sporting events are the ultimate analog experience, but you have to personalize to compete," Marinak said. "Fans want an escape - not to go back in time 50 years. Something that adds value for your customer is better than something 'cool' that might actually worsen the experience for the fan." That distinction - whether technology adds something meaningful for the customer rather than merely demonstrating what can be automated - ran throughout the summit. The result was an AI strategy considerably less sweeping than automating every available interaction. Across the panels, the recurring model was to use technology for speed, analysis and repetitive execution while leaving people responsible for deciding what action actually makes sense. "Technology is changing fast, but the relationships remain," vivenu VP of Global Partnerships & Strategy Keal Blache said. "At the end of the day, this will always be a business grounded in relationships."

Arenametrix and vivenu partner to turn ticketing data into audience growth. Arenametrix and vivenu are strengthening their partnership to help sports, culture and live entertainment organisations get more value from their audience data - from the moment it is collected to the way it is activated. A strong data strategy starts with the quality of the data produced. With its modern technology stack and focus on structured, accessible data, vivenu provides a solid ticketing foundation on which Arenametrix can build broader CRM and audience marketing use cases. Taking audience engagement further Through the integration, organisations can bring vivenu ticketing data together with additional audience data sources to build a more complete view of their audiences - from fans and spectators to visitors, members and donors. Arenametrix helps organisations take audience engagement further by combining powerful segmentation, marketing automation and additional data sources within a unified audience marketing platform. Teams can create increasingly targeted audience journeys while extending their CRM strategy into additional use cases such as B2B sales and donor engagement. This complements the capabilities available within the vivenu ecosystem and gives organisations the flexibility to expand their audience strategy as their needs evolve. Connected the same day. Enabled to deliver faster. The Arenametrix-vivenu integration is already live and used by multiple joint customers, like Culturespaces. New customers can be connected to Arenametrix on the same day, removing lengthy technical integration projects from the onboarding process. But connecting the data is only the first step. Arenametrix combines its technology with dedicated market and marketing expertise, helping teams identify the right use cases, structure their approach and start activating their data quickly. For sports clubs, museums, leisure attractions and performing arts organisations, this means having both the technology and the support to put audience data to work effectively and generate results faster. Further improvements to the integration are planned to broaden the data available and unlock additional use cases over time. Already using vivenu? Discover how Arenametrix can connect your ticketing data with the rest of your audience ecosystem and help your teams start putting it to work from day one. Book a meeting Get its CRM best practices every month Case studies, guides and trends in arts and sports marketing. Unsubscribe in one click.