Easol will be the official booking platform partner for the world’s biggest afrobeats festival Afro Nation Portugal & Ghana, along with the infamous Secret Garden Party and El Dorado. Through their partnership with Easol, these festivals are no longer reliant on third party ticketing solutions and will be able to manage many aspects of their business on one platform, from their website and bookings through to payments, with complete end-to-end control of their brand, customer journey, data and finances so they can run their business on their own terms.

THE NEW WAY TO CREATE AND SELL FESTIVALS: Afro Nation, Secret Garden Party and El Dorado each look to provide their attendees with an unforgettable experience but have long been restricted by the tools at their disposal. Traditional e-commerce marketplaces and booking platforms are outdated for festival organisers today. Easol is working with experience creators in over 135 countries and has created a new category of commerce – experience commerce – which is designed to give power back to festival organisers across their brand, customers, data and finances.

With Easol, these festivals will be able to manage everything they need for their business including:

• Setting their own booking fees, so they can decide whether they charge their customers a 20%, 15% or even a 0% booking fee, depending on what works best for their business.
• Owning data to track customers so critical data for marketing isn’t lost to third party ticketing platforms.
• Building their brand on their own website, on their own domain which is fully integrated with all their booking requirements.
• Getting paid instantly with weekly payouts – instead of after the festival.

Suzi Sendama, head of commercial at Secret Garden Party, said: “When it comes to organising Secret Garden Party  each year, we need a technology solution that is intuitive and easy to use so we can easily update our website with new information, add things to it as our festival grows and develops. We haven’t been able to do this with any other solution or partner except Easol. Having complete control and access to all elements of the festival organisation will also be critical, including control over our finances.”

UNLOCKING MARKETING POTENTIAL: With the new partnership with Easol, these festivals will be able to unlock their full potential and have complete ownership over their customer data. The ability to own and track customer data is critical to the success of festival marketing campaigns. With traditional ticketing platforms, event organisers are losing this vital data to third-party sites and in turn wasting money on inefficient campaigns.

Ben Simpson, co-founder and CEO of Easol, explained: “We’re super proud to be partnering with these amazing festivals and feel honoured to be a part of their journey. My Co-Founder Lisa and I started Easol to build a ‘creator-first’ alternative to traditional ticketing and third party booking platforms, that empowers rather than limits experience businesses and along with our team we are excited to support our new partners towards success in 2023 and beyond.”

Luke Wolfman, co-founder El Dorado, said: “Being able to upsell everything on one booking journey where everything is all  working in-sync, with our own branding, will only help us sell more whilst providing a much better booking experience for our customers too.”