One year of Sphere
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The first thing you need to know about the sphere in Las Vegas is don't call it that. It's sphere, not the sphere. Lose the the. But everyone calls it the sphere, so we will too.

The Sphere opened just over a year ago. They said it would be the future of entertainment and some people go and really do feel that way. But others, including those of us at Today Explained, are wondering if this whole operation is sustainable. So,

On the show today, we're going to look back at one year of the sphere. From Bono to Fish to Dead & Co to The Eagles to that documentary that Darren Aronofsky made to the upcoming EDM New Year's Eve rave that they're throwing. And we're going to ask whether this really could be the future of fun or maybe it's just another Las Vegas bust. ♪

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Hey, it's Liam from Decoder with Nilay Patel. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in tech and business, about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series, diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today. For instance, what does it mean to start buying and using AI at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with it? And of course, podcasting.

Yes, the thing you're listening to right now. Well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds, and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

Today, Explain talked to a whole bunch of people about their experiences going to shows at the Sphere, and that is what you're about to hear. It's funny because obviously Vegas is famous for glitz and lights and flashy stuff that's designed to catch your attention. And at first, before I had seen it in person, I thought, well, this is just going to feel like...

heightened version of that. But it looks like a spaceship landed in the middle of Vegas. It's just wild looking. And they do so many fun and creative things that they project on the outside of the sphere. I mean, sometimes they do commercials and advertising, which I get. But I think the first time I saw it was when they had a cute kind of cartoon face that would change its expressions. The first part of the experience is making your way from the Venetian

along this long corridor or skyway to the actual, you know, the base of the sphere. You know, there's different sections of that, but one of them is this sort of seemingly endless carpeted hallway that I remember as being sort of red and gold, like, you know, like the Kremlin or like one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. You know, it's sort of garish, sort of ugly, endless space.

every 40 yards or whatever to your right is another giant convention hall. The scale of it is bizarre. And you're in this river of other people. And I just remember on the first night, this extreme nervous energy among everyone. Just no one knew what to expect. And

What was really cool about it is that, you know, in the fish world, there's people that have been to like hundreds of shows and this was the first time for everyone, including the band. But it spills you back outside, so suddenly you go from being in the air-conditioned Saddam Hussein Palace out onto this, you know, 110 degree hard pan asphalt.

Where I was surprised by how it looked up close. It almost looks like a giant light bright. It's like these kind of pretty big single lights and pegs kind of coming out. My sort of engineer boy brain was sort of going into overdrive. Like, ah, how does that work? That's amazing. Look at that. Look at that. My first impression walking in there was amazing.

How are they going to get all these people through these lines fast enough to actually make the show? And I mean, within 10, 15 minutes, everybody was through. But then once you're actually inside, I apologize for using like sci-fi metaphors, but it really does have that feeling like it's just the way it's lit. It's kind of like dark, but there's things are kind of glowing. There's escalators that take you up to the higher levels. There was ambient music, this like a special U2 mix that they had made that was kind of

playing in the lobby area. So when you first enter the lobby and get into the foyer, there's a bunch of animatronic robots that are interactive that you can speak to, ask questions, and they'll respond. Welcome to Spear. They're humanoid. They look a little bit like C-3PO maybe. You could try to start a conversation with one and it would kind of answer based on whatever information it was pulling. It could get your name, which was kind of eerie. Hello, Grace. Are you Grace Fulton?

And, you know, we've all heard the surveillance stories of a lot of the venues, especially the Jim Dolan ones. And, you know, there was certainly that feel to it, too. Like the staff was extremely attentive in a way that I've never really felt like at any big event like that. You also just got the sense that like you were being watched everywhere you go. Yeah.

Then you go inside, and it's also beautiful to behold inside because it's, you know, the sphere at rest prior to the show, it has, it had this sort of, it projected onto the screen an illusion of the armature of the building.

And when the show started, the inner workings of the sphere looked like it was starting to open. What looked like the sphere opening stopped at the lightning bolt, which is a symbol, a Grateful Dead symbol. But what really happens, I think it's the second song, if I remember correctly, again, where suddenly it cracks open, you know, the armature disappears, and, you know, you're outside their old house, that old Victorian, and then...

the camera or the or the perspectives slowly pulls away from the house and and goes into the air you know like a balloon or a helicopter and you slowly pull away from the city of san francisco above the peninsula over the bay you can see you know the fault lines and the hills and you can identify if you've ever lived there as i have you identify where you lived where you went you know which parks you went to where your friends live where your friends lived

And then, you know, and then it winds up delivering you into space. And then the first thing that hit me after that was the International Space Station came flying by and it made a huge noise. And it really startled me. And I said, wow, this is really, this is just amazing. This whole venue is just amazing. Probably half a dozen times, I felt, I don't think the phones worked in there. I can't remember, but I felt like I wanted to tell everybody I know, you have to come check this out.

I would say the band was like 5-10% of my visual field. That's probably even high, like 5%. And the rest is the screen. So Phish's visuals were a little more out there, if you will. They were pretty wild. One was like a puppy, except it was giant. It was like King Kong-sized puppy.

just licking the screen of the sphere. So, like, just imagine, like, a tongue dragging. And it was, like, super, like, gross and weird, but also really cool. Like, I felt like I was trapped inside a marble and a dog was licking me. But just, I was like, "What crazy mind came up with this?" And then a third type of visual, and I noticed this more with the dead than with fish,

There were more traditional visuals where it was just like the band. So it was just either just a static shot of the whole band on the stage and playing or maybe close-ups of a couple of musicians. So those were fun and they were nice, but also I've seen, I know what those guys look like. So, you know, it was fun and nice to have, but I really enjoyed the scenery and the new stuff more.

You know you're not in the real world, but every other thing that's happening to your senses is telling you that you're wrong and that you actually are. There's a moment...

in U2's set where they do Where the Streets Have No Name and they have like a sunrise and it kind of continues to rise and eventually set by the time the song is done. And I knew I wasn't out in the desert under a blazing sun, but my brain didn't really comprehend that. Like it felt like you were, that's where you were. So I would definitely caution anyone that's prone to motion sickness to maybe take some Dramamine or something beforehand. I'm personally prone to it. So I

I came prepared, fortunately, but I definitely felt the impact of it. One thing that was fun, you know, as I'm becoming an older lady, I like to sit down at concerts a lot. And it's a great place to sit at a concert because your actual chair has like haptic feedback. You know, it's like a gamer chair. It was really cool to hear some of the songs and like really feel the beat and to also just like

really be getting good sound. A lot of times you go to concerts and just by virtue of where you're sitting, there's some weird echo or something's tinny or whatever it is. At Phish...

we'd be up there they'd be rocking out jamming we're all dancing having fun and then all of a sudden you'd hear like a a tom-tom drum that sounded like it was straight above you or a couple of keys from the piano that sounded like it was coming from a corner and everyone would kind of look up and look over there while that that sound was happening for five seconds then would go away

We all kind of look at each other and say, hey, did we just hear keys coming from straight above us? Did you all hear that too? One thing about the Sphere venue is that it's a lot more controlled than a normal dead-end company experience would be. There were some people smoking, but not as many. It was not...

Like, I've been to shows where you couldn't see the stage because there was so much smoke in between you and the stage that it was hard to see. Very different than, like, a Madison Square Garden fish show where, you know, you come home, like, smelling like an ashtray. There was sort of a classy feel to it. You know, everyone was kind of on their best behavior. I think this idea of, like, the immersion that it represents, I do think that that's the future of entertainment, but I'm afraid what I really fear is that

The real future is each of us plugged into our own virtual reality feed, whether it's with goggles or glasses or even whatever brain projections we can project onto the inside of our eyeballs, if that makes any sense, without having to go anywhere or be with other people. And we just kind of, you know, we'll be, you know, as Father John Misty put it, making love to Taylor Swift in the Oculus Rift, you know, and everybody will have their own individual experience.

curated fake reality, you know, it'll be like the matrix will just be like floating in our, in some sort of weird amniotic state and feeding our minds with whatever entertainment we want. I mean, we're kind of halfway there already, but, uh, so, um, I, you know, I'd, I'd be happy if the sphere was, was as dystopic as it got, you know, but I fear that's not the case. I don't think it's the future. I think it's now. I think it is the best. I haven't been to every venue in the world.

But I can't imagine there's a venue right now that delivers a better live music experience than Sphere. And if this even progresses and gets better and better and better, I don't know how it could get any more

I don't know that I would say, I mean, first of all, I don't even, I don't think they're necessarily making money nor who knows when they ever will. So in that sense, I don't know that it's the future, but I think if you're a band, like it should be one of your goals or one of your stops. My concern about the sphere is just the way that they're booking it. So far there've been four bands, you two, dead and company fish, and then the Eagles. And I'm like, can you guys book anyone from,

that didn't exist until after 1990. Like, they just haven't done anybody a little bit younger, and I don't know if that's a calculated decision, because they feel like older people are maybe more willing to spend disposable income on this experience and a whole trip to Vegas. But I really think they need to get some other kinds of flavors in there.

That was Alan Rosenthal, Scott Zellner, Scott Wright, and Commander David Llewellyn, and also New York Magazine's Jen Chaney, The Ringer's Katie Baker, and The New Yorker's Nick Palmgarten, who have all written great dispatches from The Sphere. Go read them if you're thinking of going yourself. The Sphere was supposed to be the future of entertainment. Why they keep booking your dad's favorite bands when we're back on Today Explained.

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And of course, podcasting.

Yes, the thing you're listening to right now. Well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, investment funds, and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves. And

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts.

This message is a paid partnership with Apple Pay. When you've got a gift list to finish, the last thing you want to do is take out your wallet a million times. Instead, pay the Apple way.

With Apple Pay, you can pay with the phone you're already holding. Just double-click, smile at Face ID, tap, and you're done. The people in line behind you will thank you. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services, LLC, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.

Josh Cosman's beat is business at the New York Post, which somehow makes him one of the foremost authorities on the sphere in Las Vegas. Well, we're sort of a national paper. Not sort of. We're a national paper. And certainly media and entertainment are important to us. And James Dolan, Jimmy Dolan, owns the sphere. And Jimmy Dolan also owns the New York Knicks and New York Rangers and is quite an iconic player.

and somewhat disliked New York figure, so he makes it interesting for us. We asked Josh to tell us how the sphere came to be. This has been Jimmy Dolan's dream for several years, perhaps five to ten years. He is very into music. He plays in a band. This next song is the title song of our record, and it is called Ballyhoo.

In fact, he opened for the Eagles at one time. People who know him would say that his true love is music, perhaps more than even owning the sports teams. So he's had this idea of this one-of-a-kind, technologically advanced sphere for a long time.

He thought it would cost a billion dollars to build. It ended up costing 2.3 billion. It was a big, big cost overrun. And that really begins the interesting story of the sphere.

Because his dream, to a degree, has been realized. Within a year, the sphere is quite iconic. From a technological perspective, it largely works. People are wowed by it. Yet he has not figured out how to make money. In fact, he's losing quite a bit of money on the sphere.

The problem is it's very hard to make money off concerts. Taylor Swift has made $2 billion. Well, Taylor's the performer. It's not hard for a performer to make money. It's hard for the arena to make money. So not just here, really at any big arena, the artist will make anywhere from 80% to 100% of concert revenues. Wow.

Then the arena itself might make money off parking, which there's not much here at the Sphere, or merchandise. And here the added problem is U2, for example, it cost them more than $10 million to build a technological set that would match the music because there is no other arena like the Sphere. So Dolan agreed to pay more than $10 million to produce their show for

Then during their show itself, you two made roughly 90% of ticket sales. That's not leaving a lot left over.

And that's a real problem because the real way Dolan makes money is these movies. Those he can make money off of. But the concerts, not much. But it's funny you say that because I was in Vegas for a weekend where there weren't any concerts. There was just this movie, this sort of climate documentary made by Darren Aronofsky. And I...

Couldn't find, you know, reviews from movie critics, probably because they couldn't all make it to Vegas. But you could find reviews from people who went to see it and they were scathing reviews. It is simply not worth the money. It's 2024. I'll need more than mountain visuals to be impressed. The film itself is indescribably bad. I feel entitled to compensation at this point.

It did not scream, this is the future of this sphere's business model. No, and the problem is these movies cost a lot to produce because you're producing them for this one-of-a-kind sphere. So they're about to spend or they're spending about $80 million on remaking The Wizard of Oz. Wow. So it is the original Wizard of Oz. It's not a new version. It's the original. And they're shortening it to 80 minutes.

But it costs $80 million, so you have to sell a lot of tickets to make up the $80 million. Now, the plan was they were going to build this first sphere in Las Vegas and then have satellite spheres in places like London. That didn't work.

Plans for a sphere across the pond have dried up. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has rejected plans to build one in Stratford, saying it'll cause too much light pollution. So they've just sold their first satellite sphere in Abu Dhabi because the idea is you could take one of these movies that you've spent 50 to 100 million dollars producing and you have it in your sphere but now you can sell it in another sphere.

And then you can start making money. We would love to build in other places, and that is our plan, is to build other spheres. Love to build one in New York. But the whole concept is based on multiple spheres, and the issue has been everyone can look at this and say, hmm, cost you $2.3 billion to make, and you're not making money in Las Vegas? Why would I do that? So Abu Dhabi has stepped forward, but they have been it.

Getting back to the concerts for a second here, it feels like it's the concerts that are really going to excite people. That's true. People travel to Las Vegas to see Adele, to see Katy Perry, to see Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. They don't travel to Las Vegas to watch a depressing movie.

nature documentary. Sorry to keep harping on Darren Aronofsky's poor movie. He's an artist, Sean. He's an artist. I keep forgetting that. For a while there, the Sphere was in talks to host Beyonce. This is the kind of big ticket item that would bring people to Vegas for, who knows, a year, two years, over and over again to see Queen B.

And then it fell apart and instead you've got these like boomer acts over and over. No disrespect. Love some Eagles songs. Is it not working out for Jimmy Dolan to attract younger artists? Well, it's an issue.

So it depends on who you speak to why this is happening. Beyoncé was clearly in talks. We reported at the New York Post that Beyoncé wanted at least a few weeks of rehearsal time. But she's Queen B. She wants those few weeks, and she's going to want them when she wants them. Well, Dolan has three to four movies showing a day. He wants that money. So he did not give her the couple weeks of rehearsal time she wanted because that would have meant lost revenue for Jimmy Dolan.

There are people you speak to around this who are concerned about that. You want this fear to be hip, to attract a younger audience, and it hasn't really happened. One of the challenges is it is a roughly 18,000-seat arena, so you need an artist that will at least come close to packing that arena. That does limit you. There are plenty of interesting artists that can pack a 10,000-seat arena.

And not only does it need an act that can pack an 18,000-seat arena, because you have to create a special performance for this space, and that takes money and time and effort, you need an artist who's willing to come there for two or three months, at least, or longer.

Is there a third option here that we haven't discussed? Is there something other than Beyonce or, let's say, some super successful custom movie that they run on the nights they don't have shows that could keep this place not only, you know, around, but thriving? Yeah.

Well, they were hoping to have conferences there during the day, which would raise some money. Oh, gosh. That sounds so boring. I'm sorry.

Well, you and I might find it boring, but I'm sure you could put on quite a presentation. We built this legendary venue that you could see from space. Anyway, here's a PowerPoint. Here's IBM. So that is one way to generate money. They were hoping certainly for a sponsor. They don't have a sponsor.

So they were hoping by this point you would have Federal Express's The Sphere or whoever it would be. They're looking for a price that is similar to a top sports arena in the country. They haven't found it. What they have been able to sell is ads on the exosphere, the outside of the sphere. The financial performance of The Sphere they lost in the quarter ending September 30th, they lost $117 million.

That can only happen for so long. The sphere was promised to us as the future of entertainment. And I know we've been laughing a little bit here, but, you know, that sounds pretty cool. And when I've seen the thing in person, which I have a few times, it looks pretty cool. And when I see people...

But experiencing it, they seem to be having a great time. I have a friend who goes to a lot of shows and he went and he said it was the greatest thing he's ever seen, fish at the sphere. But does this feel like the future of entertainment or does this feel like IMAX ultimately, which is like a thing people do sometimes when they feel like it, but it hasn't really become the standard even though it's great.

Well, that's a great question, Sean, and I think we're at an inflection point. And I think what makes the sphere such an interesting story is that on the one hand, it's worked. You know, like your friend said, that Phish concert was the most amazing concert he said he's ever seen, and it's Phish. I shouldn't say that.

So it's kind of this dilemma that I think Dolan is facing right now. I have this amazing arena. I have this amazing facility, but I don't know how to make it, forget profitable, I don't know how to...

even make it viable. You know, a typical arena of 18,000 people, you could throw sports teams in there. You can't have sports teams here. The UFC held an event there that they say they generated 22 million in revenue, so it was a success, but they also say they'll never come back. You know, they've said that publicly. So obviously it wasn't too much of a success.

So do I think it has a chance? Yes, because it is an amazing facility. But if you look at the stock price, you look at the market cap, it's less than $2.3 billion, significantly less. Market investors are telling you this is a failure. Yet, it is really iconic. Now, if you think of Las Vegas and you say, okay, give me, you know, knee-jerk reaction, give me three iconic things in Las Vegas, three iconic venues, this is probably one of them. Yeah. Yeah.

I love a mixed bag. Yeah, this is an interesting mixed bag. And how Dolan pivots will be a really interesting question.

Josh Kosman, New York Post, Pura Vida. Thanks to Annie Phillips and Cameron Laws for their help with today's show, which was produced by Amanda Llewellyn, who had a pretty good time at the Sphere when she went this year with her dad. Amanda was edited by Amin Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter and Patrick Boyd. This was Today Explained.

Hey, it's Liam from Decoder with Nilay Patel. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in tech and business, about what they're putting resources to and why they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series, diving into some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today. For instance, what does it mean to start buying and using AI at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buying? And most importantly, what are they doing with it? And of course, podcasting.

Thank you.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the AI space? Why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech and hire away co-founders? The answer, it turns out, is a lot more complicated than it seems. You'll hear all that and more this month on Decoder with Nilay Patel, presented by Stripe. You can listen to Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Support for the show comes from AT&T.

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