But the cracks in this model are beginning to show. Ticket prices can’t keep up with the rising cost of new attractions, while every new experience comes with pressure to be more spectacular than the last.

At the same time, audience expectations are changing. Gen Alpha doesn’t just want to watch, they want to participate. They want experiences that respond to them, worlds they can influence, and immersive environments that move beyond observation to become something playable.

They don’t simply want something bigger. They want to feel part of something bigger.

Deep tech advances are making that possible.

Thinking beyond the attraction

Whether it’s a ride, a sporting event or a live performance, the assumption has been that the attraction itself is where value is created. Everything around it exists to move people from one attraction to the next.

But one of the biggest untapped opportunities in location-based entertainment lies in the spaces between those moments in the experience itself.

The experience economy is moving beyond passive consumption towards active participation. Audiences want experiences that feel dynamic rather than fixed, where they can explore and contribute. That changes how venues should think about value creation.

Rather than concentrating engagement into a handful of headline attractions, future venues will extend the experience across the entire visitor journey. Spaces that were once considered purely functional can become opportunities for storytelling, interaction and play.

Let’s take a fan arriving at a football stadium. Now, the experience might be defined purely by what happens on the pitch. In a responsive venue, those moments become part of the experience itself.

Before the match begins, fans could join team-based challenges linked to the game they are about to watch. As they move through the venue, intelligent digital guides, live data, dynamic characters and location-aware content could respond to their actions in real time, helping shape the experience as it unfolds. A concourse becomes the setting for a prediction challenge, while merchandise stands host exclusive merchandise rewards unlocked through participation. Even a queue becomes an opportunity to influence a live competition taking place between groups of supporters around the stadium.

The event remains important, but the value to the audience and operators extends much further.

Creating more reasons to come back, and value that lasts

This move from fixed attractions to responsive venues will help tackle one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Today, operators can invest tens of millions in a flagship attraction closely tied to a single piece of intellectual property. If audience tastes change or a franchise evolves, that investment can quickly become difficult and costly to adapt.

The industry already understands it’s running out of road and needs to do things differently. The challenge is turning that ambition into reality. As we found in the Deep Tech Index 2026, leaders can see change coming and recognise where future value will come from, but often face a disconnect between that ambition and making it happen.

Location-based entertainment offers a perfect example of what closing that gap could look like. Rather than continually rebuilding physical infrastructure, operators can use deep tech to create experiences that evolve around changing audience expectations rather than relying on building something new to offer something new. Physical attractions, infrastructure and spaces become a fixed foundation while the experience around them continues to evolve with the audience without the need to rebuild.

This is made possible by advances in agentic AI, sensing technologies and intelligent orchestration, creating connected systems where visitors, intelligent agents and physical environments continuously interact and adapt, extending the value of what’s already there.

The same intelligence that helps operators run a venue more effectively can also improve the visitor experience. Take congestion as an example. Rather than becoming purely an operational challenge, new activities, content or incentives could be activated elsewhere, naturally encouraging movement while keeping visitors immersed in the broader experience.

With this intelligence layer in place, venues evolve from static destinations into living systems that continuously respond to the people within them. New narratives, new challenges and new reasons to return.

Personalisation without isolation

When people hear this vision, they often assume the goal is personalisation – but that’s only part of the answer.

We don’t want to create thousands of perfectly crafted individual experiences. On the contrary, people are hungry for opportunities to connect with others in meaningful ways. As more of our lives become mediated through often isolated digital experiences, the value of shared physical experiences is more important than ever.

So, the opportunity becomes creating something that’s personal and participatory at an individual level while also being social and collaborative.

This becomes especially relevant when we think about fandom. The relationship someone has with a team, a character or a franchise doesn’t begin when they walk through the gate. Someone who has followed a story for years already brings their own perspective, favourite moments and emotional connection with them, and yet most venues still give everyone exactly the same experience.

Future responsive venues offer an opportunity to recognise what visitors already bring with them to an event and allow that history to shape how the experience responds, all while they remain part of a shared space with people who feel equally connected.

Designing for trust

Yet as venues become more intelligent and personalised, questions around privacy inevitably follow. The moment a venue knows exactly where you are and what you’re doing, it’s either engaging or it’s creepy, and the line between those two outcomes is surprisingly thin.

What’s interesting is that the data involved is often identical in both cases – the difference comes down to design. Done well, a responsive venue understands context, anticipates needs and adapts in real time, helping guests feel supported rather than managed. Done badly, it makes them feel watched.

The future of entertainment can’t be about simply adding more sensors and collecting more data. Enabling personalisation and reducing friction cannot be achieved by instrumenting every corner of a venue and analysing what happened afterwards.

It should be about creating experiences so thoughtfully designed that personal never becomes intrusive, achieved through context-aware orchestration that treats sensing, decision-making and the guest experience as part of the same system, operating in real time.

A human-centred future for entertainment

Ultimately, this vision is not about AI, sensing or orchestration, but about people.

As our Shaping a new era of human-centred innovation report argues, the winners in the next era will be those that use the power of AI-enabled deep tech to solve real human needs. In entertainment, whether we’re seeing our favourite band, team or characters, those needs are agency, connection and, perhaps most importantly, joy.

This is what happens when intelligence becomes part of the environment itself, helping people connect more deeply with places, stories and each other. Not technology for technology’s sake, but experiences that learn and evolve around human needs.

That’s how entertainment creates memories that last a lifetime.

Expert authors