Original article published in Pollstar (01/11/18) by Gideon Gottfried

Live Entertainment Assistant's Lea chatbot uses machine learning and natural-language processing to recommend shows to users on Facebook Messenger and enable them to directly buy tickets. "We work with ticket exchanges [similar to other secondary companies] that give us access to thousands of ticket sellers who can list their inventory on our platform," says Live Entertainment Assistant CEO Brian Canty. He notes Lea is currently integrated with secondary listings, but there are plans to add primary listings soon. "We don't set the prices, the sellers do—we just promise to our fans that we have the lowest prices available to them in the market," Canty says. "In fact, this means that the tickets are often below the face value price of the ticket, if demand is low." Canty says 20 percent is the most his company charges, with all transactions occurring through the ticket exchanges. "The tickets are sent to the fan and then removed from the exchange, so there are no issues with two people getting the same ticket," he says. Canty notes Lea primarily relies on proprietary machine-learning algorithms to generate accurate recommendations. "As fans share information like their Spotify/streaming data or their location, for instance, the recommendations get more and more accurate—the more you interact with Lea, the better she'll get at predicting the right event at the right time for you," he says.

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