Original survey findings on how the events industry is adopting artificial intelligence, what it is being used for, what is holding it back, and where it is going.
Published 14 February 2025. Last updated 18 April 2026. By Adam Parry, founder, Event Tech Live.
The headline findings
45% of event organisers are actively using AI. 55% of AI adopters are small businesses. 30% of event companies have started using AI within the last year. The top purposes are data analytics (20%) and personalisation (18%). ChatGPT is the dominant tool at 20% of usage. Training staff (30%) and cost (25%) are the biggest barriers. 65% of companies plan to increase AI usage in the next two years.
- 45% of event organisers actively using AI
- 30% started in the last 12 months
- 20% use ChatGPT as primary AI tool
- 30% cite staff training as the top barrier
- 65% plan to increase AI use within 2 years
- 40% highly positive on AI’s industry impact
What this research covers
- Who is using AI in events?
- What is AI being used for?
- Which AI tools dominate?
- How much are event companies spending on AI?
- What is holding AI adoption back?
- What implementation challenges are companies facing?
- How does the industry perceive AI’s impact?
- What will the next five years look like?
- Expert views: 11 industry leaders on AI
- Methodology
- Frequently asked questions
Who is using AI in the events industry?
Agencies (25%) and brands and corporates (24%) lead AI adoption in events, together representing nearly half of all AI users. Event technology suppliers account for 14%, event management companies for 8%, and associations for 7%. Adoption is weighted toward client-facing organisations rather than venues or production.
By company type
| Company type | Share of AI adopters |
|---|---|
| Agencies | 25% |
| Brands and corporates | 24% |
| Event technology suppliers | 14% |
| Event management companies | 8% |
| Associations | 7% |
| Event owners and promoters | 6% |
| Education facilities | 6% |
| Production companies | 4% |
| Venues | 4% |
| Press and media | 1% |
By role
Event organisers and event directors are the most active users of AI in events, representing 45% of all AI usage. Chief executives and senior leaders account for 28%, event technology managers 10%, marketing and PR 7%, sales and business development 6%, and production and operations 3%. AI adoption in events is leadership-driven, not delegated to technical teams.
| Role | Share of AI users |
|---|---|
| Event organisers and event directors | 45% |
| Chief executives and senior leaders | 28% |
| Event technology managers and technicians | 10% |
| Marketing and PR | 7% |
| Sales and business development | 6% |
| Production and operations | 3% |
By business size
Small companies with 1 to 50 employees account for 55% of AI adopters in events, while mid-sized companies at 51 to 1,000 employees make up 26% and large enterprises over 1,000 employees make up 20%. AI is primarily a small-business lever for punching above weight.
By geography
Europe leads AI adoption in events at 35% of respondents, followed by North America at 30%, international event deliverers at 20%, Asia at 10% and other regions at 5%. The United Kingdom, United States and the Netherlands are the three most active individual markets.
By experience
AI adoption in events is concentrated in early-stage users. 30% of companies have been using AI for less than a year, 25% for one to two years, 20% for three to five years, 15% for five to ten years, and 10% for more than a decade. The industry is at the front of an adoption curve, not the middle of one.
What is AI being used for in events?
Data analytics (20%) and personalisation (18%) are the two most common purposes for AI in events. Content creation (15%), customer service automation (14%) and event logistics (12%) follow. Matchmaking accounts for 10% and security for 5%. AI is being deployed primarily to understand attendees and tailor experience, not to run the event on the day.
| Purpose | Share of AI use cases |
|---|---|
| Data analytics | 20% |
| Personalisation | 18% |
| Content creation | 15% |
| Customer service automation | 14% |
| Event logistics | 12% |
| Matchmaking | 10% |
| Security | 5% |
| Other | 6% |
Which event types are using AI most?
Conferences lead AI usage at 18% of event-type adoption, followed by meetings and networking events at 16% and corporate events at 15%. Trade shows, incentive travel and consumer events show lower adoption rates, reflecting the higher data density and structured agendas of conference formats.
Which AI tools dominate in events?
ChatGPT is the most widely used AI tool in events at 20% of usage, followed by content creation tools at 15%, video editing tools at 14% and data analysis tools at 10%. Image generation (8%), predictive analytics (7%) and matchmaking tools (5%) follow. The industry is leaning on general-purpose models rather than events-specific AI.
| Tool category | Share of usage |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 20% |
| Content creation tools | 15% |
| Video editing tools | 14% |
| Data analysis tools | 10% |
| Image generation tools | 8% |
| Predictive analytics tools | 7% |
| Matchmaking tools | 5% |
| Other | 21% |
How much are event companies spending on AI?
40% of event companies spend less than $10,000 per year on AI, 30% spend $10,000 to $50,000, 20% spend $50,000 to $100,000, and 10% spend more than $100,000. Current investment is dominated by experimentation budgets; structural spend on AI infrastructure is concentrated in the top 10%.
| Annual AI spend | Share of companies |
|---|---|
| Less than $10,000 | 40% |
| $10,000 to $50,000 | 30% |
| $50,000 to $100,000 | 20% |
| More than $100,000 | 10% |
What is holding AI adoption back in events?
Training staff is the single biggest barrier to wider AI adoption at 30%, followed by cost at 25%, data privacy concerns at 20%, integration challenges at 18% and resistance to change at 12%. The constraint on AI adoption in events is workforce capability, not technology availability.
| Barrier | Share citing as significant |
|---|---|
| Training staff | 30% |
| Cost | 25% |
| Data privacy concerns | 20% |
| Integration challenges | 18% |
| Resistance to change | 12% |
What implementation challenges have event companies faced?
25% of event companies cite integration with existing systems as their biggest AI implementation challenge. Cost (20%) and lack of internal expertise (18%) follow. Data privacy (15%), resistance to change (10%) and scalability (7%) round out the challenges. The pattern is consistent with earlier-stage enterprise software adoption cycles.
How does the industry perceive AI’s impact?
40% of the events industry views AI’s impact as highly positive and a further 30% as moderately positive, giving AI a 70% positive perception rate. 15% are neutral, 10% moderately negative and 5% highly negative. AI has stronger positive sentiment in events than most enterprise software categories at a comparable adoption stage.
| Perception of AI’s impact | Share of respondents |
|---|---|
| Highly positive | 40% |
| Moderately positive | 30% |
| Neutral | 15% |
| Moderately negative | 10% |
| Highly negative | 5% |
What will AI do in events over the next five years?
65% of event companies plan to increase AI usage in the next one to two years, 20% have no expansion plans, and 15% remain uncertain. Over five years, the 2025 research forecasts eight structural shifts: hyper-personalised attendee experiences, routine-task automation, predictive analytics as standard, AI-driven matchmaking, integrated VR and AR, conversational AI concierges, biometric security, and falling AI cost.
Which AI technologies are event companies considering next?
| Technology being considered | Share of companies |
|---|---|
| Data analytics tools | 22% |
| Content creation tools | 20% |
| Chatbots | 18% |
| Predictive analytics tools | 15% |
| Video editing tools | 15% |
| Image generation tools | 12% |
| Marketing communications analysis tools | 10% |
| Matchmaking tools | 8% |
Expert views: 11 industry leaders on AI in events
The research includes first-person contributions from eleven named practitioners across agencies, enterprise events, production, publishing and ventures. Key takeaways are summarised below. Read the full interviews via the links.
- Marco Giberti, CEO, Vesuvio Ventures.
Investment in AI will keep growing. The event tech space will go through a natural phase of growth and consolidation. Founders should educate themselves on AI as a whole, not chase features. Matchmaking (Grip, Brella) is where AI has the clearest near-term value for trade shows.
- Stephan Forseilles, CTO, Easyfairs.
Easyfairs has already trained a private LLM for post-event debriefings. AI drives visitor no-show prediction, rebook scoring, sentiment analysis and survey translation. The next impact wave will be AI agents that interact with other platforms, not just produce text.
- Mike Seaman, CEO, Raccoon Events.
Cautious but curious. Notes that over 80% of AI startups fail (RAND). Argues for ‘know your supplier’ diligence before relying on AI vendors. Warns that AI inference of meeting context can be as flawed as any human’s.
- Baris Onay, Founder, Precision Communities.
AI turns session recordings into year-round content, produces mini whitepapers from transcripts, and helps introverts start conversations. The opportunity is AI assistants that build attendee agendas through conversational interfaces.
- Kerry Prifty, Senior Director, Enterprise Events, Liberty Mutual.
AI has cut contract review turnaround from one-to-two weeks to 48 hours. Post-event survey analysis that used to take days now takes minutes and has changed location strategy for at least one programme. Real-time sentiment analysis is next.
- Brandt Krueger, Senior Production Manager, EideCom.
“It’s not AI that’s going to take your job; it’s someone who knows how to use AI that’s going to take your job.” Used AI to upscale speaker graphics to ultra-wide format in under an hour. Generative AI has found more production use cases than the metaverse ever did.
- Anca Platon Trifan, Founder, Tree-Fan Events.
AI-driven energy management systems can adapt lighting and sound to attendance numbers in real time. Wordly.AI and Recordly.AI used for live captions and translation. Textio used to check marketing copy for bias. AI is actively contributing to sustainability, not just operational efficiency.
- Matt Parlier, Director, Event Initiatives, American City Business Journals.
Generative AI is enabling multi-city event replication at scale through localised content generation. Warns of the ‘1 and 3’ problem: AI-generated content that leads with one attention-grabbing line followed by three generic bullets. Attendees can detect it.
- Ilaria Basile, Operations Manager, Clarion Events.
Created a 4m x 3m signage using AI image generation. Testing Motion for AI-powered project and calendar management. Sees AI-powered chatbots as the next step for exhibitor and attendee experience.
- RJ Crowder-Schaefer, Global Head of Event Product and Technology, Bloomberg.
Bloomberg is deliberately slow on AI adoption because of data privacy and PII exposure risk. Has deployed AI-based captioning and translation across 2,500+ events for accessibility. Piloting Microsoft Copilot for marketing workflows.
- Michael Brown, VP Technology Solutions, SXSW.
SXSW uses Phrasia AI to analyse 4,500+ PanelPicker proposals and SXSW Recommends (in-house ML) to help attendees navigate 6,000+ events. Forecasts real-time session summaries and AI-generated personalised schedules as the next wave.
Methodology
The 2025 AI in Events research is based on a survey of event professionals conducted in late 2024 and published in February 2025. Respondents spanned agencies, brands, corporates, event technology suppliers, event management companies, associations, venues, production companies and education facilities. Geographic distribution was weighted toward Europe (35%) and North America (30%), with 20% of respondents delivering events internationally.
Survey findings are supplemented by eleven in-depth interviews with named industry practitioners across enterprise events, ventures, trade shows, festivals and production. All quantitative findings on this page are sourced from the original survey data; qualitative observations are sourced from named interviewees as attributed.
The research was originally published in partnership with EventMobi. All editorial judgements, data interpretation and findings presented on this page are Event Tech Live’s. EventMobi’s sponsorship supported the survey fieldwork only.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of event organisers are using AI in 2025?
45% of event organisers and directors were actively using AI tools in 2025, according to the Event Tech Live AI in Events survey. Adoption is heaviest among senior roles, with chief executives and senior leaders accounting for a further 28% of AI users.
What is the most common AI tool used in the events industry?
ChatGPT is the most widely used AI tool in the events industry, accounting for 20% of AI usage. Content creation tools follow at 15%, video editing tools at 14%, and dedicated data analysis tools at 10%.
What are the biggest barriers to AI adoption in events?
Training staff is the single biggest barrier at 30%, followed by cost at 25%, data privacy concerns at 20%, integration challenges at 18%, and resistance to change at 12%.
How much are event companies spending on AI?
40% of event companies spend less than $10,000 a year on AI technologies. 30% spend $10,000 to $50,000, 20% spend $50,000 to $100,000, and 10% spend more than $100,000.
Which event companies are adopting AI fastest?
Small businesses with 1 to 50 employees account for 55% of AI adopters in the events industry. Mid-sized companies make up 26% and large enterprises 20%.
How will AI change the events industry over the next five years?
65% of event companies plan to increase AI usage within two years. The research forecasts eight structural shifts: hyper-personalisation, routine-task automation, predictive analytics as standard, AI-driven matchmaking, integrated VR and AR, conversational concierges, biometric security, and falling AI cost.
Cite this research
If you would like to reference findings from this research in your own work, the recommended citation is:
Parry, A. (2025). AI in Events 2025: Adoption, Barriers and Forecast. Event Tech Live Research. Retrieved from https://eventtechlive.com/ai-in-events-adoption-barriers-and-forecast/
Journalists and analysts are welcome to quote findings with attribution. For media enquiries, contact adam@eventtechlive.com.
Related Event Tech Live research
- Browse all Event Tech Live research
- Download the AI in Events 2025 Report (PDF)
- Download the Event Tech Insight Report 2024 (PDF)
About the author
Adam Parry is the founder of Event Tech Live and the Event Technology Awards. He has spent over 15 years in the event technology industry as an operator, advisor and investor. Follow Adam on LinkedIn.
Disclosure
Original 2025 survey conducted in partnership with EventMobi. Editorial independence is maintained. Event Tech Live has no commercial relationship that influenced the presentation of findings on this page.
Update log
18 April 2026: Republished as ungated content with all eleven expert interviews now hosted as standalone pages. Structural rewrite for extractability and schema compliance. All 2025 survey data retained.
14 February 2025: Original publication.
