Experience commerce technology platform Easol has announced partnerships with a raft of leading festivals.

Easol will be the official booking platform partner for Afro Nation Portugal & Ghana, along with the UK’s Secret Garden Party and El Dorado.

The company, which launched a new financing solution for festival organisers in the autumn, says clients will be able to manage many aspects of their business on one platform – from setting their own booking fees to owning data – with complete end-to-end control of their brand, customer journey and finances.

“We’re super-proud to be partnering with these amazing festivals and feel honoured to be a part of their journey,” says Easol CEO Ben Simpson. “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.”

“Having complete control and access to all elements of the festival organisation will be critical”

Suzi Sendama, head of commercial at Secret Garden Party, says: “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.”

Easol unveiled the full capabilities of its all-in-one toolkit to power festival organisers at its Festivals Showcase event streamed in September.

“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,” adds Luke Wolfman, co-founder of El Dorado.

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The number of fans visiting the Viagogo site has plummeted since the secondary site was banned from advertising through Google, the Guardian has revealed.

According to figures obtained from analytics service SimilarWeb, traffic to Viagogo’s UK site has dropped 80% – from 4.5 million visitors per month to 820,000 – and by 70% on its global site – from 15.3m to 4.5m monthly users – in the almost three months since Google banned the site from paying to appear at the top of search results.

“Google is a key part of any company’s advertising mix and the suspension has certainly seen a decline in traffic from this source. However, as a global business we employ multiple marketing methods, to ensure we can reach the widest global audience effectively,” reads a statement issued by Viagogo.

“This has allowed us to manage any impact of the suspension on the overall business, whilst we are working with Google to resolve their concerns and be reinstated. Viagogo has long enjoyed a close working relationship with Google and we are in discussions presently to resolve the suspension.”

“Google is a key part of any company’s advertising mix and the suspension has certainly seen a decline in traffic from this source”

According to a 2017 IQ report, secondary ticketing sites such as Viagogo were paying up to 15 times more than promoters to appear at the top of Google’s sponsored search listings.

The move to bar the site from Google’s paid-for search results was widely welcomed by the industry with promoter Kilimanjaro Live, UK Music and anti-tout campaign groups FanFair Alliance and Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing among those to show support for the decision.

Viagogo has faced a number of court orders and lawsuits around the world. Most recently, New Zealand’s Commerce Commission was granted permission to pursue a temporary injunction against the site.

In September, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decided to halt legal proceedings against the secondary site, in a move that concerned anti-tout groups.

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