Experience Design: How We Shut Down Regent Street for the Gumball 3000 Festival

Gumball 3000 is an aspirational lifestyle brand that combines automobiles, art and popular culture. The annual Gumball 3000® rally has evolved into a week long festival of live music concerts, action sports and spectacular car shows hosted in capital cities, achieving live crowds of over one million people, and a televised and online audience that reaches over100 million households in 60 countries. Luciana Machado was the Event Lead in charge of VIP hospitality (hotels and parties), and managed sponsor activations .

Cars, Crowds, Chaos (and David Hasselhoff)

One of the biggest, boldest productions I ever pulled off was this: we shut down Regent Street in London, yes, the entire stretch from Oxford Circus to Leicester Square, for Gumball 3000.

Picture it: a roaring parade of supercars rolling down what’s usually one of the busiest shopping streets in Europe, transformed into a full-blown spectacle. Thousands lined the barricades, cameras flashing, people screaming. We had celebrities, DJs, the Mayor of London, a custom-built half-pipe, a Shell vintage petrol station pop-up, brand activations up and down the street, and even a skateboarding demo. The whole thing was a sensory overload—in the best way.

Behind the Barricades: Regent Street Takeover

My team - just three of us - spent months negotiating with the Crown Estate, the trust that manages Regent Street. They only shut it down twice a year, and that year the NFL had already taken one of those slots. We had to prove our worth: detailed plans, ROI projections, full safety briefings. We liaised with Metropolitan Police, city authorities, and the event safety board. Somehow, against the odds, we got the green light.

We mapped every inch. We placed Fiat Abarth displays, ran energy drink activations (including our Gumball x Battery collab), and worked with Hamley's for in-store madness. Music blasted from both ends of the street. David Hasselhoff kicked off the show by climbing on top of his car like a rockstar.

https://vimeo.com/1166234318

David Hasselhoff comes down Regents Street on top of his car.

The cars came down from Manchester in a convoy, turned Regent Street into a catwalk, and ended the run at the W Hotel in Leicester Square, where I hosted the check-in, formal dinner, and a party at Cirque, a nearby club I scouted months earlier.

It was madness. It was beautiful. And it was one of the most logistically complex, creatively fulfilling things I’ve ever worked on.

When I drop into Regent Street in London, it’s clear what the event has grown into. Central London has been closed off. Regent Street, home to heritage buildings and colossal brands, has been gated-off into a mini-festival. The number of spectators is astonishing. Hundreds of thousands, easy. They’re here, on the streets, climbing poles and leaning over barriers, waiting for a glimpse of the fine-tuned monsters and their famed drivers. - CNN

Around 11 p.m., I meet a young family camped out in a Soho side street.

“We came here eight hours ago,” says Alice, a well-spoken, ostensibly responsible mother of five. “We wanted to make a day of it. We want to see the McLarens. It’s school night – they should be home in bed!”

From the moment they departed Miami, the Gumballers have had eyes on them – spectators waiting out the routes, mammoth crowds in arrival cities, GoPro’d livestreams, the media crews that tail the rally (CNN included).