Thankfully it feels like a distant memory now, but Covid was a very challenging time for live events, and the outlook for any business that existed to bring people together was bleak. Concerts, sporting events, theaters, you name it, faced an uncertain future. A similar cloud of doubt hung over business travel. As Michael Dell famously noted, why leave home when you can fly across the world on Zoom Airlines? Until the pandemic ended, public health concerns would understandably keep people away from crowded venues and non-essential travel. But even longer term, the prevailing assumption was that life and work would remain fundamentally changed. The so-called experience economy was headed for a major reset.
It turns out the experience economy as traditionally conceived is indeed undergoing a seismic shift, but not in the way forecasters imagined. As long-time investors in this space, my colleagues and I at Providence Equity Partners have found that people emerged from the pandemic with a renewed appreciation for experiencing life in person. Today, both personally and at work, people are seeking more opportunities to come together, not fewer. And they are doing so despite another wave of uncertainty, this time due to the rise of AI. Once again, there are projections of a changed, digital-dominant world. Yet the reality is demand for experiences that bring us together “in real life” is booming.
So why does conventional wisdom keep missing the mark? The answer lies in what we see as the rise of the “IRL Economy.”
The experience economy gave a name to the age-old tradeoff between buying goods and experiences long before AI entered the picture. The IRL Economy doesn’t follow the same zero-sum logic. It is rooted in a deeper set of forces. Humans are hardwired for connection and community, and this need is remarkably durable. Therefore, the stronger the push towards a frictionless digital-first world, the stronger the pull towards real life. Seen through this lens, rising demand for in-person connection amid the rapid expansion of technology is not a contradiction. Instead, it’s exactly what we should expect, and it’s what we are witnessing.
In fact, Providence estimates that the market for concerts and theater, live sports, and trade shows, which in 2024 was roughly $700 billion, could grow to about $1.0 trillion by 2030, an increase of nearly 50%. Consider one telling example from a corner of the IRL Economy that has been continually counted out: In 2025, over 17.5 million people attended a show at one of London’s West End venues, nearly 15% above pre-pandemic levels. A format once thought to be facing a structural decline has not only recovered but is now attracting record audiences.
There are many reasons for this momentum, but two stand out. First, we are in the middle of a global reassessment of what a healthy relationship with technology looks like. While that conversation may have gained steam in the context of social media, it is now intensifying with the proliferation of AI. A growing body of research points to in-person connection as a fundamental pillar of health, increasingly viewed as essential alongside exercise and nutrition. In turn, much of what was once viewed as discretionary is being recategorized as something closer to non-negotiable, as sources of connection and community.
Second, technology is making time spent in the real world more visible, shareable, and in some cases, even profitable. People want to get out in the real world in part because they can share it. Some of the most engaging online content today features people documenting what they are doing offline: concerts and sporting events they attend, restaurants where they eat, places where they travel. This is as true for casual, everyday users of social media platforms as it is for paid influencers. In that sense, real-world experiences enrich our digital lives by giving us something worth sharing from our phones or computers.
That positive feedback loop is fueling soaring demand, creating a powerful engine of economic growth. And the expansion of the IRL Economy, just like the AI buildout, will require substantial capital to build and modernize venues, bring successful concepts to new markets and create entirely new offerings.
One interesting observation on where the two differ is in how that growth is distributed. While much of digital media broadly and the AI industry specifically are concentrated among a relatively small number of dominant players, the IRL Economy is largely decentralized, creating opportunities for businesses and communities across the country, and indeed throughout the world. Consider that there are at least 28,000 companies in the U.S. whose primary function is staging live performances, running spectator sports, promoting events or organizing trade shows. In other words, there are no hyperscalers of the IRL Economy.
To be sure, there are large companies like Live Nation. But some perspective is in order. Despite attracting scrutiny comparable to that directed at Big Tech, Live Nation’s market capitalization is a fraction of Google’s. Behind every live event is a vast, complex network of businesses spanning production, logistics, staging, technology and venue operations, many of them relatively small and specialized. The result can be stronger companies and better choices for consumers and enterprises alike.
As with any part of the economy, there are risks. Legitimate concerns exist about limitless ticket price increases making events less accessible. The desire to build more and more high-end hospitality could come at the expense of the shared game day experience. Those who try to exploit their fan base will probably get burned. But we don’t see the underlying demand going away.
That is why the simultaneous rise of AI and the IRL Economy may be one of the more consequential economic developments of our time. They are often framed as competing forces, but we see something more interesting, which is that each may reinforce the value of the other. And for all the amazing accomplishments of AI, it will never replace human nature.
A screen can give us extraordinary access to information, entertainment and one another, but it cannot reproduce the feeling of being in a stadium when the home team scores, hearing a favorite artist in a packed venue or connecting with a new business partner over coffee instead of over video conference. Consumers and companies appear to understand this intuitively. The more abundant digital interactions become, the scarcer genuine human connection can feel. Those who create compelling reasons for people to come together in the physical world have an enormous runway ahead.
