From Finding Events to Buying Tickets: The List Access Starts with AI Discovery Author: Reinout te Brake Published: 2026-11-11T12:31:00+01:00 Updated: 2026-11-11T11:39:54+00:00 Canonical: https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/from-finding-events-to-buying-tickets-the-list-access-starts-with-ai-discovery Source: https://reinouttebrakecom.wordpress.com/2026/11/11/from-finding-events-to-buying-tickets-the-list-access-starts-with-ai-discovery/ You know you want to go out. Finding a night that suits you and your friends can take longer than it should. Which events are on? Is the music right? Can everyone afford a ticket? You may have seen plenty of flyers and videos without knowing where you actually want to go. The List Access (https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/from-one-instagram-promo-to-the-list-access-sebastians-story) wants to help young people make that choice. Its new AI assistant lets you describe what you are looking for and find events in its agenda. The ambition is to make the whole journey easier, from finding a night out to buying the ticket. This is phase one: helping you find and compare events. Ticket purchasing through the assistant is the next ambition. My son Sebastian is building the platform, and I help develop it. I have written about how he started the community (https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/from-one-instagram-promo-to-the-list-access-sebastians-story) and turned an interest in events into a business. The assistant is another step in making that platform useful to the people it serves. How can AI help young people find an event? You can start with something as simple as “Techno this weekend” or “House up to €35”. You can search for yourself or an evening with friends. With The List Access’s event assistant (https://thelistaccess.nl/vind-jouw-event), you describe what you want in your own words. It searches the agenda, asks a follow-up question when needed and helps you compare up to three events. If the suggestions are not quite right, you can keep talking. Change the music, narrow the budget or explain what your friends prefer. Your earlier wishes stay part of the conversation. And if you have no idea where to start, “Surprise me” offers a way to explore the agenda. The point is to make choosing easier. Someone asking for house music on a limited budget should come away with a few relevant options and a clearer idea of where to go. Can you buy tickets through the assistant yet? For now, you buy the ticket yourself with the official provider. That is also where you check the current price, availability and entry conditions. A budget request helps narrow the search. Prices can change, and an event in the agenda may have sold out. The assistant keeps unconfirmed prices and minimum ages visibly uncertain, so you know which details still need checking. The next ambition is to let you buy tickets through the assistant as well. You would move from discussing a night out to confirming the event, tickets and total price before authorising the purchase. For the visitor, the experience should be straightforward: find something you want to attend, agree on what you are buying and receive your tickets. Is The List the first to use AI for finding events? AI event discovery already exists. In its July 2026 announcement about Claude (https://business.ticketmaster.nl/ontdek-live-evenementen-via-claude-dankzij-de-nieuwe-ticketmaster-integratie/), Ticketmaster describes searching for events through conversation, viewing ticket information and continuing to its marketplace to buy. It also points to its ChatGPT integration. For The List, the focus is young people looking for parties, club nights and festivals. Someone may know the music they like and how much they can spend without knowing an event name. That is the question the assistant should help answer: where could I go? Why is choosing with friends different from searching alone? A night out often involves more than one preference. One friend wants techno. Another has a smaller budget. Someone else wants to stay closer to home. A short list gives the group something concrete to discuss. Instead of passing around an endless stream of links, they can compare a few events and decide which one works. Choosing an event has similarities with choosing a game from a large catalogue (https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/game-discovery-without-endless-scrolling): more options can make the decision harder. A useful recommendation takes account of what you want to do and who you are doing it with. Budget also extends beyond admission. In my article about the full cost of a night out (https://reinouttebrake.com/stories/your-ticket-is-affordable-your-night-out-may-not-be), I examine how travel, food and drinks affect what people can afford. An assistant that eventually helps with those practical choices could make planning easier too. How does this fit the wider move towards AI shopping? Helping someone choose is the starting point. Carrying out a purchase takes the assistant further. This is often called agentic commerce: AI helps people find what they want and complete a transaction with their permission. In its September 2025 announcement of Instant Checkout (https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/), OpenAI described a way for customers to confirm an order and payment details inside ChatGPT, while merchants handle payment and fulfilment through their own systems. McKinsey researchers Deepa Mahajan, Hannah Mayer, Katharina Schumacher and Roger Roberts, with Katharina Giebel, explore different levels of delegation in their January 2026 analysis of agentic commerce (https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-automation-curve-in-agentic-commerce), examining how much of a purchase people might delegate. They make a useful distinction: those levels describe technical capability, “not what consumers will always choose to allow.” For a night out, that choice is personal. You may welcome help finding events and still want to make the final decision yourself. A future purchasing service has to make clear what you are agreeing to buy. What does this mean for event organisers? The List aims to help young people who want to go out but have not yet chosen an event. That gives organisers an opportunity to be considered while the decision is still open. Clear event information helps: the music, line-up, venue, date, age restrictions and ticket details. The easier it is to understand an event, the easier it is for someone to decide whether it suits them. My Event Marketing & Ticket Sales guide (https://reinouttebrake.com/event-marketing-ticket-sales) looks at the steps between getting attention and bringing people through the door. The assistant adds a way to help visitors during the choosing stage. My view: start with the person who wants to go out What interests me is the young person sitting with friends, wanting to do something and struggling to settle on a plan. The List should help them find a night they are excited about and can afford. That gives us a clear test for phase one. Are the suggestions useful? Do people find an event they want to attend? Do they come back the next time they want to go out? Buying tickets through the assistant is the next ambition. It makes sense to start by getting the choice right. You can try The List’s event assistant (https://thelistaccess.nl/vind-jouw-event) and see what it suggests for your next night out.