In Houston, VIP hospitality packages for the 2026 World Cup already stretch to eye-popping costs for pitch-side lounges and ultra-premium golf equipment. The sports activities hospitality market general is on a trajectory to succeed in tens of billions of {dollars} globally, fueled by company internet hosting, luxurious suites and “money-can’t-quite-buy” entry at mega-events just like the World Cup and Olympics.
And but, for a lot of company, “VIP” nonetheless means a parking go, a shorter line and a lanyard.
Jennifer Brisman thinks that definition is out of date.
Founder Jennifer Brisman
VOW
Brisman is the founder and CEO of Vow, an AI-driven working system for the stay experience economic system. She’s produced greater than $60 million in stay occasion contracts over twenty years, working throughout every thing from high-end galas to NBC’s Saturday Night Live and PFL MMA. She describes herself as “nutty about live” and talks about “the smell of sweat, the rise of the crowd, the handshakes, the heartstrings, the hugs.”
Her central thesis: the business has been excited about VIPs far too narrowly, and about knowledge far too transactionally.
The Same Person In Every Seat
Brisman begins with a easy however highly effective thought:
The identical one who’s a butt in a seat at a stadium can also be a butt in a seat at South by Southwest, perhaps Cannes, a commerce present, a summit, a gap night time on Broadway. It’s the identical profile in every single place they go.
Today, a lot of the software program round stay occasions—particularly in sports activities—clusters into 4 buckets: ticketing, fan engagement, analytics and occasion administration. Each tends to see the visitor by a slim lens: a ticket purchaser, a loyalty ID, a CRM contact, a badge.
Vow’s wager is that the actual worth lies within the macro view: recognizing that these are the identical people transferring by a number of high-emotion moments throughout manufacturers, venues and cities.
Brisman describes Vow as a B2B-to-VIP platform. On one facet are organizers and stakeholders—groups, leagues, sponsors, businesses, hospitality suppliers, journey and lodging companions. On the opposite facet are company, attendees, followers, gamers and contributors. Vow’s software program sits between them as a “brain” that unifies knowledge, workflows, communications, seating and visitor coordination throughout non-public, invite-driven experiences, fairly than open shopper marketplaces.
Every butt in a seat, she jogs my memory, is top-line income. But virtually no one treats that particular person’s habits throughout occasions as a compounding asset.
AI On Offense, Not Just Defense
Most of the AI dialog in sports activities and leisure has targeted on protection: price financial savings, automation and operational effectivity. There is actual worth there. But the subsequent decade’s strategic benefit will go to manufacturers that use AI on offense to engineer delight and loyalty at scale.
When I requested Brisman how she sees AI shaping emotional connection, she pushed again on the premise. Events are already emotional, she mentioned. AI isn’t going to create the emotion. It’s going to be predictive.
In her view, AI’s job is to:
– Understand habits throughout a number of occasions
– Predict wants and wishes in actual time
– Serve the precise provide on the proper second, when emotion is highest
That may imply proactively arranging lodge and eating for a visitor who has attended a number of sponsor occasions round a tentpole just like the Super Bowl. Or understanding {that a} VIP who brings youngsters to MMA occasions could worth family-friendly upgrades at a tennis event or NBA recreation.
Crucially, Brisman believes the business should transfer past what she calls cannibalizing individuals’s knowledge by infinite outbound advertising. She expects the most important gatekeepers—e mail suppliers and browsers—to maintain tightening what reaches shoppers’ inboxes.
Instead, she believes personalization will more and more occur within the second. Think streaming fashions the place two followers watching the identical recreation see fully completely different business breaks. Stadiums and stay occasions, she argues, will mirror that logic—utilizing in-venue tech, apps and screens to ship hyper-relevant gives and providers whereas the emotion is peaking, not in a follow-up e mail the subsequent day.
When VIP Still Means Parking, A Gate And A Lanyard
Right now, Brisman thinks a lot of the business’s VIP efforts are nonetheless in model one.
Looking at how main occasions promote hospitality, she sees a well-recognized sample: higher seats, a separate gate, open bar, a lodge bundle. The pricing has superior sooner than the expertise design.
Corporate consumers and high-net-worth people pay a premium for suites, golf equipment, non-public lounges and bundled journey. Those choices are rising quick, however in lots of circumstances the expertise layer has not caught up with the expectations of company who stay on frictionless digital platforms of their each day lives.
For company transferring between a number of occasions in a compressed window—Super Bowl week, a multi-day pageant or an Olympic cluster—the complexity usually reveals up as a gradual stream of emails, PDFs, QR codes and directions that drive them to spend extra time watching their telephones and fewer time within the second.
Brisman’s description of a frequent VIP is acquainted: go to 5 occasions and also you may get 25 or 30 emails. You are continually digging in your inbox for which gate, the place to select up your lanyard, who your contact is. Going to 1 occasion is straightforward. Going to eight can really feel like work.
Vow’s objective is to orchestrate that complete journey in a single place, with logic that anticipates wants and reduces friction fairly than including to it.
The Real Innovation Sandbox: Private Live Experiences
It is tempting to give attention to the most important public levels—the Super Bowl, World Cup, Olympics, Final Four. But Brisman believes probably the most fascinating work within the subsequent few years shall be in non-public, invitation-only stay experiences constructed round these tentpoles.
Those is perhaps sponsor-hosted concert events, investor summits, VIP dinners, off-site showcases or team-hosted hospitality areas adjoining to the primary occasion. Vow is already powering experiences for properties like Saturday Night Live and PFL MMA, serving to handle seating, company companions, fighters’ households and different stakeholders as a unified ecosystem fairly than a sequence of disconnected visitor lists.
Because these are curated teams—lots of to low-tens-of-thousands of individuals—the bar for personalization is increased and the information sign is clearer. It can also be the place company sponsors can most clearly join hospitality spend to relationship outcomes and, in the end, income.
Brisman’s five-year imaginative and prescient is easy: whether or not an individual is in an NBA suite, at a gap night time premiere or in a VIP space at a struggle night time, on the finish of the rainbow they’re nonetheless the identical particular person. The alternative is to acknowledge them as that particular person throughout contexts, and to make use of AI to be predictive fairly than repetitive.
2026 Will Look Familiar. 2028 May Not.
When I requested what she expects in 2026, as Italy hosts the Winter Games and North America gears up for the World Cup, her reply was conservative.
She predicts that 2026 will look quite a bit like 2025. Most organizers will nonetheless be figuring it out. Hospitality will proceed to emphasise higher seats, skip-the-line entry and bundled lodges.
The extra structural adjustments—those that actually give occasions a “brain”—could take till later within the decade to point out up at scale. By the time Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Games, she expects broader use of AI and real-time knowledge to unravel very human issues: minimizing lavatory and concession strains, orchestrating flows so company lookup as a substitute of down at their telephones, and designing experiences that consciously carry youngsters and households into the live-event behavior early.
She additionally worries aloud about over-reliance on betting as a development engine and hopes it doesn’t undermine belief within the broader ecosystem.
Betting On The Brain Behind The Experience
Vow not too long ago closed a seed spherical led by KB Partners, a Chicago-based sports activities and media investor, with participation from Capitalize VC and others. It is a modest-sized seed by some requirements, however a significant one in right now’s funding local weather and in a class the place many conventional ticketing gamers flatten out at modest scale.
There isn’t any scarcity of firms chasing slices of the stay occasions stack—ticketing, resale, fan engagement, analytics, CRM, streaming, betting. But as Brisman factors out, tickets themselves are more and more a commodity. The sturdy worth lies within the relationship across the ticket: the context, the coordination and the cumulative story of the place a visitor has been and the place they could need to go subsequent.
If the final decade was about getting butts in seats, the subsequent one could also be about what occurs earlier than, after and between these moments. The manufacturers that win is not going to simply have a greater suite or a pricier lounge. They can have a better mind behind the expertise—and companions who know how one can apply it to offense, not simply protection.