Photo by Greg Doherty/Getty Images
U2 won’t officially open Las Vegas’ Sphere until September, but the otherworldly orb has already made an impact on the Strip. And after blinking its digital eye last week, it has the entire entertainment world’s attention.
In many ways, the Sphere represents a gauntlet thrown down in the direction of sports business by the rest of the entertainment world. If you want to continue attracting events, fans and attention, high-tech will need to be table stakes.
But on another axis, the Sphere is an ally. Because it actually exists.
“We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have VR experiences without those damn goggles?,’” MSG Ventures CEO David Dibble told Rolling Stone, explaining how the concept came to be. “That’s what the Sphere is.”
While Apple pushes its Vision Pro headset, venues of all kinds need to answer with a vision of their own: one where people eagerly gather in this world to experience something together, even if they’re doing it inside something that looks like it came straight from another planet.
Construction of Sphere—like any good performer, the building is going for mononymity—started in 2018 with a designated $1.2 billion budget. As 580,000 square feet of LEDs were added to the building’s exterior, the venue’s budget exploded past $2 billion—and counting.
Vegas’ newest attraction is the world’s largest spherical building, though at 516 feet wide by 366 feet high, ‘Sphere’ is more stage name than mathematical designation. Inside, attendees will see the world’s largest indoor LED screen, at 160,000 square feet (and hopefully, they won’t find themselves in one of the unexpectedly obstructed view seats). Designers also focused on the acoustics, utilizing 164,000 speakers for a patented audio technology that precisely beams soundwaves to certain sections.
Despite rumors of a potential NBA tenant, Sphere has been built for other shows instead. Its sports schedule is likely to be limited to fights and gaming contests, but Sphere’s arrival—along with its underlying tech—still represents a pivotal moment for the modern history of sports events.
The new MSG Sphere being lit up as a basketball promoting NBA Summer League is one of the coolest looking things ever. So so sick. pic.twitter.com/y93LU7leaE
— Vince Rampa (@Rampa19) July 5, 2023
For an arena, a musical performance can bring in twice as much profit as a typical NBA or NHL game—and revenue from those big-ticket shows have helped fund increasingly expensive stadiums. Stan Kroenke’s SoFi Stadium, home of the Las Angeles Rams and Chargers, cost $5 billion to build. The Raiders’ Las Vegas home, Allegiant Stadium, now looks relatively economical at $1.8 billion.
But Sphere joins a line of sites built for music first. After MSG successfully revived the Forum in Los Angeles, formerly a Lakers haunt, as a concert facility, Oak View Group announced plans to build six such arenas in growing cities like Austin, Texas. Now, there’s already talk of taking Sphere’s model on the road, including overseas. As next-generation music venues come online, the onus will be on traditional sporting stadiums to improve their offering to musical acts. Sound can no longer be an afterthought.
Soon enough, the high-tech LED-based setups will become an expectation for fans too, regardless of the event they’re attending. It was less than 15 years ago that Jerry World (it can no longer hold the title of ‘Death Star’ with Sphere’s opening) debuted in Dallas with an eye-popping, 11,520-square-foot scoreboard at its center. You could fit about 14 of those inside Sphere’s indoor screens.
The Death Star… I mean MSG Sphere, is a $2.3 billion entertainment globe where there will be a spectator zone for the F1 race in November. pic.twitter.com/VGG0dmDuyo
— Vincenzo Landino (@vincenzolandino) July 3, 2023
Just having some pretty pixels displaying the action won’t be enough, either. As TGL golf prepares to mix simulated golf with real sand, and a new women’s basketball league teases an “all-digital” court, LEDs are moving closer to the center of the action for fans both in-venue and at-home.
Sphere will make money from sold-out shows and viral advertisements, but experts expect the real cash to come from in-venue broadcasts: fans buying tickets to watch content displayed on the walls of the one-of-a-kind (for now, at least) space. A similar business model is already bringing some of that opportunity to sports fans.
Experiential tech company Cosm has signed a deal with the NBA to air live games in the company’s soon-to-debut immersive spaces built around large-scale domed LED screens. The concept sits somewhere between a planetarium and a high-tech sports bar. Cosm also has an agreement in place with the UFC, meaning one day, sports fans could gather in domed locations around the country to watch combatants duke it out inside Vegas’ new megadome. The future is … domes, I guess? Maybe the Romans were onto something after all.
