The Sphere Lights Up Las Vegas
The helicopter rises above Las Vegas Boulevard, starting a cruise from one end of the Strip to the other. Its mission is to highlight the cool, saucer-like Allegiant Stadium, the site for Super Bowl LVIII, but the inadvertent show-stealer on this jaunt is something else altogether, something newer and much more futuristic: the Sphere. Funky, cutting edge and robed in technology, the 366-foot-tall, 875,000-square-foot domed structure—the world’s largest spherical building, built for an eye-popping $2.3 billion—is an apt addition to America’s gambling mecca. Situated just east of the Strip, and a chip’s throw away from Sin City’s riot of neon and familiarly logoed hotel facades, the Sphere’s cheeky exterior provides a glimpse into an ever-evolving city’s coming century. It’s been the talk of the town since it opened last September.
“The Sphere is mesmerizing,” says Steve Hill, CEO of Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “You can’t take your eyes off it, and it brings attention to the entire city. It’s a phenomenal addition to the Las Vegas skyline.”
That night, the exosphere, as the Sphere’s exterior is called, displayed a giant, leering eye, perfectly detailed in ultra-high definition. The moving image is made possible by 1.2 million high-tech pucks, each of which contain 48 LED screens that can display 256 million different colors and are built into the structure’s curved exosphere. Deploying that power, the Sphere has taken on the look of a frowning, cartoonish face (becoming the unyielding fifth wheel to foursomes playing on the Wynn Las Vegas golf course, seeming to display disapproval at duffed shots), a menacing jack-o’-lantern and even the Earth itself. The illumination is so bright that the Wynn, which has rooms directly in the Sphere’s sightline, had to outfit windows with blackout curtains just so that guests can fall asleep.
Nobody was sleeping when Formula 1 roared through the streets of Vegas this past November, and the Sphere played a role. It displayed driver instructions, showed live action and included ments (the colors red, yellow and blue were deemed verboten, so as not to confuse racers in the heat of competition). rs who have run their custom-made campaigns on the Sphere include Aston Martin, Coca-Cola and American Express. Such a message is not cheap. Four hours of commercial screen time, spread over the course of a day, runs around $450,000.
James L. Dolan, executive chairman of MSG Network and the entertainment bigshot who conceived (and owns) the Sphere, said the opening of the venue marked “the beginning of a new chapter for our company.”
Big ambitions aside, the Sphere began modestly, as a sketch on a napkin, depicting a stick figure inside a circle. Gestation from there took seven years, which put completion two years beyond the scheduled finish date and swelled the final tab to $2.3 billion, a cool $1 billion over the initial budget. Dolan is so big on the Sphere that he renamed a business after the massive orb. Last April, Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. changed its name to Sphere Entertainment Co. The business is a spin-off, and includes not only the venue in Las Vegas but the MSG Network’s streaming service.
“The costs to build Sphere have been substantial,” the company wrote in its last 10-K filing. “While it is always difficult to provide a definitive construction cost estimate for large-scale construction projects, it has been particularly challenging for one as unique as Sphere.” Sphere Entertainment is public (it trades as SPHR on the New York Stock Exchange), and in its first quarter, ended September 30, it reported $7.8 million in revenues for the Sphere, including money culled from sponsorships, advertising and suite license fees. Total company revenues were $118 million, but Sphere Entertainment lost nearly $58 million in the quarter, as the namesake business of the operation is just getting started.
For Las Vegas, a city that blithely appropriates from other places—the Eiffel Tower outside of the Paris, frescos inside the Venetian, the Bellagio’s overall Italian vibe—the Sphere’s one-of-a-kind design is a big deal. “The Sphere is distinctly Las Vegas,” says Melinda Sheckells, a journalist and Las Vegas insider who’s witnessed the development of the Sphere from its groundbreaking in 2018 to the opening night of U2’s landmark string of performances that kicked off on September 29. “People come here and see something that they have never seen before, not anywhere. And I think what we have now, with the Sphere, is just a fraction of its potential.”
And all those accolades don’t even touch what goes on inside. When you head through the doors of the Sphere, things become infinitely more interesting. It seats more than 18,000 people for concerts, movies and events. It has more than 160,000 square feet of indoor video screens, enough to cover three football fields. The interior of the 516-foot-wide Sphere is encased in what feels like a single high-resolution LED screen, and the visual quality inside is even better there than on the outside.
One hundred and sixty thousand speakers, strategically placed out of sight and throughout the facility, contribute to delivering impeccable sound, the best you’re likely to experience at a rock concert. And whatever goes on in the Sphere has the potential to jet beyond three dimensions. High-tech pipe work is designed to deliver scents and sensations of moisture to mimic rain and steam. Seeing a performance inside is quite unlike watching a show in a normal venue. That much was made clear during U2’s 40-show stand there, which wrapped up on March 2. During each of the mighty rockers’ two-hour-plus performances, the stage-savvy group was pretty much overshadowed by enveloping graphics that surrounded them—and the crowd—as they put on a high-energy greatest-hits show.
On stage, without visible amplifiers in a theater that provides pitch-perfect sound, U2 pumped out songs punctuated by swimming aquatic creatures, enormous clips of a vintage Elvis Presley, a windswept desert that heralded tunes from the band’s Joshua Tree album and more. The effects are big, all consuming and immersive. Unlike in a traditional building, the Sphere has no columns to get in the way of the show, but there have been reports of seats with blocked views of the graphics due to an overhang from the upper level. If you are considering seats in the 100 section, which may seem alluring since it is low, proceed with caution. The jam-band Phish is slated to perform there in April, followed by 24 shows by Dead & Co. in May. The UFC may appear there in the fall.
“It really is a new medium,” Dolan says. “When you’re in the Sphere, you don’t get told what to look at. The audience decides what they want to focus on.”
Seeing U2 at the Sphere was about the priciest ticket in Vegas. Purchased on the secondary market, nosebleed seats ran in excess of $700 for two, and seats went for thousands of dollars. Even at those prices, making back billions will take more than just concerts. A movie called Postcard from Earth by Darren Aronofsky (he’s the guy behind The Whale and Black Swan among others) was produced specifically for the venue, which feels like Imax on steroids. It’s shown on a 160,000-square-foot screen and is part nature film, part documentary and part science fiction tale. Tickets for that start at around $99, and can run considerably higher. Designed to do more than tell a story, the flick comes with Epcot-style rattling seats and gusts of air to accent what is being seen on screen.
Some doubt the long-term success of the Sphere, including investment guru James Cramer. “The company’s long-term growth strategy hinges on building new Sphere venues in all sorts of cities around the world and, at present, it’s not clear where they’re headed next,” he said in December. There were plans to build a Sphere in London, a move that could have marked the beginning of a global push for the high-tech space, but London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan put the kibosh on the Sphere in his city, citing “intensity, nature and extent of external illumination, [which] would cause significant light intrusion.”
More in line with Vegas’ classic optimism, Sheckells believes the Sphere’s impact will be ongoing and resonate beyond the borders of Sin City. “The Sphere takes Vegas to a new level,” she says. “Vegas has a long history of impacting the entertainment industry, but this is something else altogether. The Sphere changes the way live performances are put on. Whether it spreads to other cities or not, the Sphere allows Vegas to dictate where the entertainment industry goes and what makes a performance fulfilling. And this is just the start. The sky’s the limit.”
