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#SBS TheStadiumBusiness Summit

Thanks for the business but… who are you?

Signing clients is always exciting. But our latest came via an unusual route: one that heralds how the events business (in fact, ALL businesses) will be changed by the application of AI.

We sold a mid-tier sponsorship for TheStadiumBusiness Summit 2024 [#SBS24] to a new tech client which appeared on the event’s web site Livechat channel. All questions and negotiations were conducted on this channel with what we assumed was a (real-life) person.

It transpires our team was talking to a conversational commerce engine – albeit with a marketing director setting the agenda, information requests and initiating the talk.

The company is genuine, the agreement signed and full payment for the package made the next day.

And how did our new client find our event? Its marketing director simply asked ChatGPT to identify the “best meeting to sell into the stadium sector”. Prior to this, the company had never attended or even heard of TheStadiumBusiness.

This revelation reminds us of the two sides to this partnership agreement:

  1. ChatGPT has profiled our meeting according to its algorithms (and thankfully we ranked at the top) so from the client perspective its research, qualification of events and assignment of marketing spend is being informed and directed by AI.
  2. From our side, as the event owner and organiser, we need to ensure that we are ‘open to profiling’ and that we continue to deliver the best events we can so that real people – and the AI-platforms that they utilise – can “see us for who we are”.

Of course, we’re really looking forward to showcasing the client, its people and its software solutions for the venues sector at the Summit next month – with thanks to ChatGPT.