Tixel Survey: 68% of Ticket Buyers Say AI Recommendations Are Hard to Trust

Resale ticketing platform Tixel published a report titled The Future of Ticketing – The Live Equation 2030 on September 18, 2026, surveying 5,107 general fans across Australia, the UK and the US, plus an additional 1,714 Tixel users who answered the same questionnaire. The topline finding: 68% of ticket buyers say the rise of algorithms and AI has made it "harder to know which event recommendations to trust," while just 6% say they trust AI when deciding whether to attend a show. By contrast, 42% trust recommendations from friends and family. The report sums it up in one line: discovery still runs on people, not platforms.

The trust gap between AI and word of mouth

The survey pool was defined as fans who, in the past 12 months, attended a ticketed show, bought a ticket, or wanted to go but couldn't get one. Friends and family remain the single biggest source through which fans hear about shows (49%), and the second most trusted source (42%) when deciding whether to go — behind only trust in the event organizer or ticketing platform itself.

This data lands as major ticketing platforms push AI recommendations deeper into event discovery, personalized ticket tiers and show-adjacent trip packages. The report cites recent examples including Ticketmaster's partnerships with Google Gemini and ChatGPT, and SeatGeek's partnership with ChatGPT. Tixel notes that what consumers want from ticketing platforms has shifted from simply