Jongleurs Comedy
How we rebuilt the UK's oldest comedy brand from the ground up — designing a custom web application with ticketing, venue management, artist booking, and a backend that runs it all.
The UK's most iconic comedy brand needed a digital revolution.
Jongleurs Comedy Club is a pioneer in British live entertainment. For decades, it has been the launching pad for comedians who went on to conquer screens and stages worldwide. When Kev Orkian — comedian, pianist, and entertainer — took over as CEO, he had a vision: bring Jongleurs into the digital age with a platform that could handle national-scale comedy operations.
The existing website was a static brochure — no ticket purchasing, no event management, no venue coordination. Every show was managed manually. Every booking went through phone calls and spreadsheets. For a brand planning national expansion across multiple venues, this wasn't a minor inconvenience. It was an operational bottleneck that would have killed growth.
Visit Jongleurs →
Not a website with a ticket button bolted on. A ground-up digital operating system for a national comedy empire.
A complete ticketing system built from scratch.
We designed and engineered a full e-commerce ticketing platform — not a Ticketmaster widget bolted onto a WordPress site, but a ground-up custom system that handles the entire ticket lifecycle from creation to delivery.
- Event creationStaff create shows with date, time, venue, lineup, pricing tiers, and availability caps
- Real-time availabilityTicket counts update live across the site as purchases happen
- Secure checkoutStripe-integrated payment processing with 20% VAT calculation
- PDF ticket generationCustom-branded PDF tickets with unique QR codes for door scanning
- Discount codesAdmin-created promo codes with percentage or fixed discounts, usage limits, and expiry dates
- Order managementFull order history, refund processing, and customer communication from the admin panel
Booking comedians shouldn't require a spreadsheet and 47 emails.
Managing a roster of comedians across multiple venues and show dates is logistically complex. We built a dedicated artist management system that handles the entire booking workflow — from initial invite to show-night confirmation.
- Artist profilesBio, headshot, social links, genre tags, and performance history
- Show assignmentDrag-and-drop interface to assign artists to specific show dates and venues
- SMS confirmationAutomated SMS sent to artists — reply to confirm or decline, status updates in real-time
- Artist portalComedians log in to view upcoming shows, venue details, and payment history
- Availability calendarVisual calendar showing who's booked, available, or on hold for each date
Bio, headshot, social links, genre tags, full history
Assign artists to shows with a visual interface
Artists confirm via text — real-time dashboard updates
Visual bookings, availability, and holds per date
Multi-venue operations from a single dashboard.
Jongleurs operates across multiple venues — each with different capacities, pricing structures, and show schedules. We built a venue management system that gives the operations team a centralised view of every location.
- Venue profilesCapacity, location, seating layout, venue photos, and contact details
- Show schedulingCreate and manage shows per venue with conflict detection
- Capacity managementReal-time ticket sales tracked against venue capacity with auto-sellout
- Venue-specific pricingDifferent ticket tiers and pricing per venue
- Performance analyticsRevenue, attendance, and sell-through rates per venue
Every venue's capacity, pricing, schedule, and performance — one dashboard
Per-venue calendars with conflict detection
Real-time sales vs sellout thresholds
Revenue, attendance, sell-through per location
Different ticket tiers per venue
Everything runs on a custom backend deployed to a dedicated VPS — handling concurrent ticket purchases, real-time SMS, PDF generation, and Stripe webhooks without a single third-party dependency.
The engine behind the curtain.
The system handles concurrent ticket purchases during peak demand, real-time SMS dispatching, PDF generation, and Stripe webhook processing — all without a single third-party ticketing dependency.
- Custom admin dashboardFull control over shows, artists, venues, orders, and customers
- VPS infrastructureDedicated server with Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, and Redis caching
- SMS gatewayTwilio-powered SMS for artist confirmations and customer notifications
- Email automationBooking confirmations, show reminders, and promotional campaigns
- SEO architectureIndividual pages for every venue and show, structured data for Google Events
Full control over shows, artists, venues, orders, and customer management
Nginx, PHP-FPM, MySQL, Redis
Twilio-powered notifications
Branded tickets with QR codes
Structured data for Google Events
A complete digital transformation for a legacy brand.
Synmek has helped transform our online presence, and we've seen a noticeable increase in traffic and customer engagement. Their attention to detail, professionalism, and dedication to our success make them an invaluable partner.
