Posted on: December 5, 2024, 01:41h.
Last updated on: December 5, 2024, 02:09h.
Since opening in September 2023, the Las Vegas Sphere, the most revolutionary event venue in the world, delivered on its creative promise, if not its financial one. (Operating losses for the quarter ending September 2024 were $125.1 million.) But Sphere Entertainment executive chair and CEO James Dolan is hard at work on programming that he hopes will turn his balance sheets around. Here’s what you can expect from the globular tech marvel in 2025.
Multiple Daily Events
The Sphere initially scheduled its debut film production, Darren Aronofsky’s “Postcard from Earth,” to run on nonresidency days. This avoided scheduling conflicts and gave its resident live performers added time to get in sync with — and troubleshoot — the new venue.
To increase ticket sales, Dolan told investment analysts on Sphere Entertainment’s Q1 2025 earnings call, “we have started showing the Sphere experience on the same day as residencies and we plan to run it … throughout Anyma’s multiday run, which begins around New Year’s Eve.”
Wizard of Ahhs
Dolan told analysts on the November 12 call that he and the Sphere creative team are “actively developing future productions, and look forward to introducing new experiences to audiences in 2025.” He refused to go into specifics, referring to them as the Sphere’s secret “special sauce.”
“We don’t do the special sauce,” Dolan said. “You’re going to have to wait with everybody else.”
However, readers of Casino.org’s own Vital Vegas learned way back in June that the Sphere is working with Warner Bros. Pictures on adapting “The Wizard of Oz” for the Sphere as its next movie project.
The 1939 classic will be pared down from 102 to 80 minutes, and its visual and audio components will be digitally upgraded to the tune of $80 million. Those last details come from the New York Post, which didn’t publish its story until two months after ours.
“I’ll just tell you it’s going to be great,” Dolan told analysts. “You’ll love it.”
Even Better Than the Real Thing?
Dolan believes that filming residencies held in the Sphere, and then screening the results exclusively at the Sphere, is the best way to keep milking profits from a residency long after it concludes.
“You’re not going to be able to see Bono 20 years from now live, except this way,” he said.
Therefore, you can probably expect cinematic souvenirs of both the Eagles and Dead & Company residencies next year.
We have some great bands that are coming in over the next year,” Dolan said, “and so I think we will continue to capture their concerts using our Big Sky technology … Creating a library of these kind of performances, I think. is very valuable.”
So far, however, Dolan’s theory has yet to be borne out. Ticket sales for “V-U2: An Immersive Concert Film” continue to be soft based on the more than 80% of seats that remain unsold for all upcoming performances. The film debuted on September 5, a year after U2 opened the Sphere as its first resident act.
At the same time, “V-U2” ticket prices (from $100 to $246) have yet to come down to meet the sluggish demand.
“How you program the product is something I think we’re still trying to figure out,” Dolan told analysts. “Do you program it like you program ‘Postcard from Earth?’”
The only other type of entertainment the Sphere dipped its toes into during its first year, sports, may be a nonstarter.
Although Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White called UFC 306 “seamless” and “perfect” during a post-fight news conference, he also told MMA reporter John Morgan that, while Sphere residencies allow producers to amortize their costs over multiple shows, one-off sporting events are prohibitively expensive.
“We’re not ever doing an event at the Sphere again,” White said.
