Drag and Drop: Sonny Hall on Scaling UNLOCKED Globally

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Sonny Hall sat down with EDM Identity to tell the full story of UNLOCKED, from Shoreditch to Miami and beyond.

It’s been a year and a half since Sonny Hall opened UNLOCKED Shoreditch, a multifaceted, 24,000-square-foot event space in East London. When it came time to do the same for Miami’s UNLOCKED Wynwood this August, the process had changed beyond recognition.

“We’ve turned up in Miami a whole different business,” Hall told EDM Identity over video chat. But therein lies the beauty of UNLOCKED. The venue brand was meant to be modular from the beginning, meaning it can adapt to whatever hurdles come with the global expansion at the heart of its business model.

UNLOCKED Wynwood’s main indoor hall.

“We’ve got two rules as a company,” Hall explained. “One is that we never do a massive opening party as that ends up being a peak point and we’d rather see an upward trajectory. Number two is that nothing is fixed. Everything is very much a blank canvas, and that way, we can operate both sides of the business as smoothly as possible.”

That flexibility belies the very genesis of UNLOCKED. In July 2024, Hall and company acquired the “big, concrete, open-floor-plan” building with “incredible character” in Shoreditch that would become the first UNLOCKED venue. When he learned that the general contractor he hired to inspect the space had met his wife there during an illegal ‘90s rave, it felt like it was meant to be.

Hall said, “I’m a strong believer that some spaces have a natural energy. And this clearly had hundreds of thousands of ravers’ history bottled up in it — you could just feel it in the room.”

But licensing and planning make it difficult to open a music venue in London. “It was particularly challenging to get the right licensing and permits to do what we do because not only is it in a protected area from nightlife, but our neighbors are a very famous recording studio,” Hall recounted.

Indeed, Strongroom Studio is in the building adjacent to UNLOCKED Shoreditch on Curtain Road. It was there that world-famous acts like Jamiroquai and the Spice Girls recorded some of their biggest hits.

“As you can imagine, there was a lot of sensitivity around noise pollution, so we conducted six months’ worth of intense surveying and fit-out work to let us play music to the decibel level that we needed,” Hall explained. “It has been a very complicated, tough journey to get where we are today.”

And in order to ensure the viability of the business, Sonny Hall and company have eschewed a sole focus on nightlife in favor of opening up UNLOCKED Shoreditch to a wide variety of organizers. “We had an amazing background doing corporate events,” he explained. “When I say corporate events, they could be brand activations, fashion shows — they’re not all just conferences.”

Hall continued: “There’s nightclub closures being announced, more and more monopolies going on, and booking power sitting at the top with the big promoters kind of controlling things. So we thought the best approach for our business model was a hybrid one, and making the space as modular as possible.”

Indeed, UNLOCKED Shoreditch has hosted everything from livestreamed Boiler Room DJ sets to fashion shows featuring garments by the likes of MAINS and Ella Douglas. One of its most memorable events was the global premiere of the video game EA Sports FC 26, at which footballers like David Beckham and Zlatan Ibrahimovic were present.

The UNLOCKED team includes key event industry professionals like UK Managing Director Kerry O’Connor and Events Director Jessie Parsons. The former comes from a hospitality background and worked as CEO of some of London’s best hotels. The latter is an elite event planner who’s landed deals with clients like Netflix and London Fashion Week.

Brand Director Nicos Rugeris, who joined six months ago, has proven instrumental in building a system to introduce UNLOCKED to new markets with ease. In his time with the company, he’s designed a tech platform that integrates every aspect of the business, from lead generation, socials, and marketing to booking, accounting, and reporting.

“We’ve built this whole tech platform that we call the UNLOCKED Operating System,” Hall explained. “We have this amazing vehicle that we know does well and is very turnkey.”

“It’s not a delusional thought that this is ‘drag and drop’ because we’ve really just seen it with UNLOCKED Wynwood,” Hall went on. “It feels very simple and smooth this time around. Considering the scale — it’s almost four times bigger in terms of capacity — it’s quite a jump, but anything can scale up if the idea’s right and you build it properly.”

UNLOCKED Wynwood opened its doors by hosting the first international edition of Feria de las Flores, a Colombian flower exhibition. Some 10,000 entrants paraded around the building, making it a proper kickoff event for the new space.

Hall and company did their due diligence by conducting research to determine how the Miami market differed from that of London. He recounted that they “met absolutely everyone” and learned in the process that events in the Magic City taper off during the summer months.

“In Miami, you have such major, mega events every year, like Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami Music Week, and F1 Miami,” Hall said. “These are key; they’re incredibly easy to fill. There’s always a queue around the corner, and it’s just about striking the right partnership for the dates. Once you’ve got your big events programmed in ahead of time, you’re effectively programming around those, and the summer is very, very quiet in Miami. In London it’s nowhere near as strong, but it’s consistent year ‘round.”

As you might expect, Sonny Hall is already eyeing his next market expansion for the UNLOCKED brand. And while he’s far from ready to go public with that decision, he gave EDM Identity a sense of his criteria while choosing the city in question.

“My gut feeling is the next one will still be in the US, for the expansion. There’s some emerging markets, more on the electronic and dance side. We’re seeing some new locations pop up, which is very interesting to us as that’s such a big part of what we do as a brand. Ultimately, I think we’ll probably look towards the end of 2027 at taking possession of a new space,” Hall shared.

Whether or not they run an event business, all entrepreneurs can learn from what UNLOCKED has accomplished thus far. The brand was founded on a simple idea: that no idea is set in stone, and you must always be willing to go back to the drawing board when new information is presented. Such an elegantly simple solution is bigger than any single industry. Somehow, it’s still so easily forgotten, no matter the niche.

In nightlife, at least, UNLOCKED could set a new standard for how operators navigate the turning tides of the market. It’s safe to say professionals throughout the live event space will be carefully watching how the company moves in the coming years.