Supersoniks streamlines live entertainment ticketing with Lemonway

A communications agency that became a fully-fledged software publisher 

Supersoniks began with a meeting in Tours in 1999 between Franck Lollierou and Laurent Fortier. Originally a graphic and digital communications agency, the company spent more than ten years developing websites, applications and interactive materials for a range of clients.

The ticketing venture began in 2010, almost by chance, around a client project. Le Temps Machine, a contemporary music venue (SMAC) in Tours, asked Supersoniks to build its website.

During development, the team found that there was no ticketing tool on the market suited to venues of this kind: established players were expensive and complex, designed for large cultural seasons rather than for smaller venues. Supersoniks therefore built a “prototype” ticketing module directly into Le Temps Machine’s website.

Word spread quickly through the professional network. Other venues asked for the same product. Over the course of further meetings, the team put together a specification and, in 2014, launched its first genuine ticketing software, which it immediately rolled out to four venues. Eleven years on, Supersoniks reports:

• 270 venues equipped across the country,
• around 85% of SMAC-certified venues in France,
• 30 to 40 new clients per year,
• around a dozen websites delivered each year for its ticketing clients,
• a complete ecosystem: ticketing, CRM, websites and, soon, a mobile app.

The company’s reach now goes well beyond contemporary music. Supersoniks also equips national opera houses (Nancy-Lorraine, Montpellier), the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, and film festivals such as SérieMania, Premiers Plans and the La Rochelle festival.

On the distribution side, two channels coexist: Supersoniks directly for theatre, dance and opera, and the Soocop cooperative, co-founded in 2016 with FEDELIMA and the SMA, for contemporary music, under the SoTicket brand.

For a software publisher wanting to closely integrate the payment layer into its business interfaces, this was a blocking point. Without open API access, it was impossible to automate flows on the client’s behalf. Everything relied on manual exports, transfer orders, and back-and-forth between two tools. Manageable on a small scale. Untenable beyond a few dozen equipped venues.

Meeting PayGreen by Lemonway changed the picture: a mature, accessible API, contacts available to discuss business issues, documentation and support suited to a software publisher, and native integration with no redirection to a third-party environment. 

Covid, an unintentional accelerator for refund automation 

For the live entertainment sector, the Covid period lasted eighteen months, well beyond the lockdowns alone. Tickets sold for dates postponed once, twice, sometimes three times eventually had to be refunded. Venue by venue. Show by show. Attendee by attendee.

At most ticketing providers, the process remained manual: exporting listings from the tool, sending them to the payment provider, checking transfers one by one. Supersoniks made a different choice. Rather than simply enduring the situation, the team worked with Lemonway to develop an automated refund API. 

The effect was not limited to the Covid period. Any cancellation, whether due to bad weather, an artist withdrawing or a reduced capacity, has since benefited from the same tool. The finance department of each venue is no longer systematically called upon for every incident. The ticketing team manages the whole process from its back office.

It was also during this period that Supersoniks won a significant number of new clients: venues that discovered, during the crisis, the limits of their existing tool and switched to a lighter, accessible, SaaS-based solution. 

Three operational benefits day to day 

Full autonomy over payment method configuration 

Turning Apple Pay on or off, temporarily suspending a channel, enabling a new wallet: all of this goes through the Lemonway back office, without any need for Supersoniks to intervene. Responsibilities are clearly separated, software publisher on one side, payment provider on the other, and each client retains control over its own configuration. 

Controlled handling of attendance peaks 

For season ticket launches, festival on-sales or major dates, Supersoniks’ cloud infrastructure automatically provisions the resources needed. At the same time, the team informs Lemonway in advance of critical windows so that the PSP can also size its own capacity accordingly.

The gradual rollout of wallets 

Apple Pay and Google Pay are currently being integrated across Supersoniks’ venue base. The demand comes primarily from the venues themselves, who are aware that these payment methods have become standard on mobile, particularly for the under-30 audience that makes up a significant share of attendance at contemporary music venues. 

A growth model built on quality, recognised by France 2030 

Supersoniks has no sales force. Growth comes almost exclusively through word of mouth, in a professional community that communicates a great deal internally. When one national theatre adopts the solution, its peers in the network naturally hear about it.

In 2024, Supersoniks was named one of the ten winners of the “Innovative ticketing solution” call for projects run by the Ministry of Culture as part of France 2030. The support, planned to run until the end of 2027, backs the development of a complete ecosystem: ticketing, CRM, websites, mobile app. 

What Supersoniks wants ticketing managers to take away 

Beyond the choice of software publisher, Franck Lollierou highlights a point he considers underestimated: the quality of a ticketing solution is also, and perhaps above all, measured by the experience of the teams who use it every day.

It is in that same spirit that Supersoniks chose Lemonway: a payment provider that speaks to business issues, that opens up its APIs at a cost accessible to cultural organisations, and that supports rather than imposes.