James Dolan
For the second time in three years, Universal Music Group (UMG) chairman/CEO Lucian Grainge tops Billboard’s annual list of the highest compensated music executives.
In the first year of a five-year employment contract, the London-born, Los Angeles-based Grainge earned $150.3 million, nearly six times the $25.6 million paid to second-place finisher James Dolan, executive chairman/CEO of both Sphere Entertainment Co. and Madison Square Garden Entertainment. (The fiscal years of the latter two companies ended June 30, 2023.) Live Nation president/CEO Michael Rapino, last year’s No. 1, was third at $23.4 million.
Most other executives appeared on the prior two compensation rankings. Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl and WMG’s outgoing CEO of recorded music, Max Lousada, were fifth and sixth, respectively (for the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2023). Spotify co-president/chief product and technology officer Gustav Söderström and co-president/chief business officer Alex Norström were seventh and 10th, respectively. IHeartMedia chairman/CEO Bob Pittman and president/COO/CFO Rich Bressler were eighth and ninth, respectively.
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The top 10 list has one new name in 2023: John Hopmans, executive vp in charge of mergers and acquisitions and strategic finance at Live Nation, at No. 4. The only vice president on the list, Hopmans had a relatively low salary of $982,000 but earned $23.4 million, mostly from restricted stock units and performance stock valued at $21.4 million.
The second-longest-serving CEO on the list behind Rapino, Grainge dramatically boosted his 2023 earnings with stock options, performance stock units and restricted stock units valued at $120 million. These grants included a $100 million “one-time transition award,” according to the company’s 2023 annual report, to move Grainge from all-cash compensation in his previous contract to “a combination of cash and equity” under the stock incentive plan UMG adopted in 2022.
Due to the size of the transition award, Grainge’s $7.5 million base salary accounted for just 5% of his 2023 compensation, a relatively small figure but not the lowest of the group. Söderström’s $300,000 base salary amounted to just 2% of his $14.7 million compensation. (The remainder was a stock option award.) Lousada’s $5 million base salary made up 29% of his total compensation and was the highest percentage on the list.
On average, the 10 executives received 10% of their compensation from base salaries, which is on the low side of averages in the corporate world. “By and large,” says Aalap Shah, managing director at Pearl Meyer, a compensation consultancy, “base salary constitutes about 10% to 20%” of average executive compensation.
Instead of receiving a large, guaranteed salary, top executives at public companies are increasingly paid based on their performances on metrics such as revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA growth and share price gains. “Shareholders typically prefer that at least half of a CEO’s equity awards be based upon performance criteria,” says Stephanie Hollinger, vp at ISS-Corporate, a Rockville, Md.-based provider of data and analytics to corporations. That percentage is expected to increase over time, Hollinger adds, as “pay is becoming more equity-based, and those equity awards are increasingly tied to performance-based conditions.”
In 2023, performance-based pay accounted for 53% of the average compensation for CEOs of companies in the Russel 3000, an index of the 3,000 largest public companies in the United States, according to ISS-Corporate. For CEOs of media and entertainment companies in the Russel 3000, performance-based pay was 42% of average compensation in 2023, “likely due to a higher relative proportion of other compensation elements, such as time-based equity compensation,” says Hollinger.
For most executives, performance-based pay comes in the form of company stock. Grainge’s five-year employment contract, which took effect April 1, 2023, reduced his base salary by 72% and added stock-based compensation that accounts for 57% of his target pay package. By putting Grainge’s earnings and shareholders’ interests in better alignment, UMG followed the practices of other public companies. “The view is that there should be more accountability and more performance orientation to executive compensation,” says Shah.
Receiving stock as compensation can pay off handsomely but also carries risk. The value of Grainge’s options, which vest in equal installments over four years, will depend on UMG’s share price at the conclusion of his employment contract on May 1, 2028. One-third of the options are exercisable if UMG’s share price exceeds 26.50 euros. Another third is exercisable at 30.00 euros. The final third requires a share price of 38.00 euros. The value of the grants took a short-term hit on July 25 when UMG’s share price dropped 24% to 21.70 euros following UMG’s second-quarter earnings report. But with nearly four years left on Grainge’s employment contract, there’s ample time for the share price to hit the thresholds.
With so much executive pay coming from stock, Billboard created a new separate list for top cash earners. Here, the value of noncash earnings such as stock options and unvested stock grants are excluded in favor of money that went into executives’ bank accounts in 2023.
Three executives who made the top cash earners list do not appear on the overall compensation ranking: At No. 5 is SiriusXM CEO Jennifer Witz, with $7 million; No. 6 is Live Nation president/CFO Joe Berchtold, with $6.4 million; and No. 7 is German concert promoter CTS Eventim CEO Klaus Peter-Schulenberg, with $5.7 million.
Billboard’s list of top-paid music executives is made from publicly available information culled from annual reports and proxy filings for calendar year 2023 or, in some cases, the most recent fiscal year. Public companies reveal compensation for a small number of named executive officers. So, in the case of multi-sector companies like UMG and UMG, the earnings of label heads are not made public. Because publicly traded conglomerates do not share details of subsidiaries’ executive compensation, the list does not include executives such companies as Sony Music Entertainment and BMG. Executives at privately held companies are excluded due to a lack of publicly available information.
James Dolan will continue his run as Sphere Entertainment Co.’s executive chairman/CEO for another three years. Sphere Entertainment gave Dolan a three-year contract extension that runs from July 1 to June 30, 2027, according to a July 3 regulatory filing. Sphere Entertainment consists of Sphere, the groundbreaking, $2.3-billion venue in Las Vegas; MSG Networks, which […]
James Dolan, executive chairman/CEO of MSG Entertainment, will lead the New York-based live events company for another three years. Dolan received a new contract that will keep him at MSG Entertainment through June 2027, the company revealed on Friday (June 21) in a regulatory filing. Dolan, who is also the CEO of both MSG Sports […]
A California judge presiding over a sex trafficking case that was brought against Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE) CEO/executive chairman James Dolan, the Azoff Companies and Harvey Weinstein in January is weighing several motions to throw out the lawsuit, with a decision expected to be announced as soon as early next week.
Attorney Douglas Windor, a high-profile litigator who represented Casandra Ventura (a.k.a. singer Cassie) in her since-settled sex trafficking lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs, filed an explosive lawsuit in January on behalf of Tennessee massage therapist Kellye Croft, who alleged that Dolan and an employee of Azoff Music Management conspired to traffic her to California to have sex with Dolan — who in turn allegedly trafficked her to Weinstein.
Representing Azoff Companies is powerful New York litigator Daniel Petrocelli, partner at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, who has represented Donald Trump and Travis Scott. Dolan is represented by Danya Perry, a former assistant U.S. attorney and ex-chief of litigation at MacAndrews & Forbes.
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Petrocelli and Perry have each filed separate motions to dismiss the case, which is being handled by Judge Percy Anderson, while Perry has issued a blanket denial of Croft’s claims against Dolan.
Croft alleges that she was hired to work with the late Glenn Frey in October 2013 while the vocalist and Eagles frontman was touring with the band and opening act JD and the Straight Shot, which is led by Dolan. Croft alleges that Dolan befriended her during the tour, gained her trust and then sexually assaulted her before coercing her into a sexual relationship while on the road.
Two months after returning home to Nashville in the wake of the tour, Croft alleges she was contacted by an executive at Azoff Music Management and hired to work as Frey’s masseuse for the Eagles’ six-night run of concerts at Kia Forum in Los Angeles. When Croft arrived in Los Angeles, she learned that he was staying at a different hotel than the band — leading her to suspect that she was really hired by Azoff Management as a favor to Dolan.
“Ms. Croft did not perform a single massage on any member of the Eagles while working at The Forum,” Wingdor writes, alleging that “in reality, Ms. Croft was flown out to Los Angeles for the purposes of engaging in unwanted sexual acts with Dolan.”
Croft also claims that she was set up by Dolan, allegedly with the help of two Azoff employees, for an encounter with Weinstein, the disgraced film producer and convicted rapist, during her stay at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Croft says she was confronted by Weinstein in an elevator and allegedly offered a job on the set of an upcoming film — only to later be sexually propositioned by the film producer, who then followed her to her room and sexually assaulted her, according to the complaint.
Dolan’s relationship with Weinstein dates back to 2003 when Dolan and Weinstein were part of an investment group — which also included financier and convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein — that was hoping to purchase New York magazine. Dolan also briefly served on the board of The Weinstein Company starting in 2016.
Croft allegedly decided to file the lawsuit after Dolan sent her the lyrics to “I Should’ve Known,” a song he wrote lamenting his failure to stop Weinstein from victimizing women.
In April, Perry filed a motion to dismiss Croft’s lawsuit, arguing that even if the woman’s claims were true, she still can’t sue Dolan under the Trafficking Victims Protect Act because “the bill targets and criminalizes sex trafficking, not sexual relations (which is all that is alleged in (Croft’s complaint),” according to the motion. Wigdor responded in a separate filing that Perry’s reading of the law was “wrong.”
As to the Weinstein allegation, Perry is arguing that Dolan and other former Weinstein Company board members were already released from any claims “to alleged sexual misconduct by Weinstein” during 2018 bankruptcy proceedings. Wigdor countered that Croft “did not consent to waive her claims” and wasn’t aware of the bankruptcy.
Petrocelli’s motion to dismiss argues that Croft’s complaint “contains no facts suggesting the Azoff Entities participated in, benefitted from, or even knew about any sex trafficking scheme” when hiring her. Petrocelli also wants Croft and her attorney sanctioned for filing the lawsuit and is asking that Croft be required to pay Azoff’s legal costs.
The motions have been taken under advisement by the judge, who late last week canceled a Monday (June 3) hearing for oral arguments on the motions, noting the “Court finds this matter appropriate for decision without oral argument.“ His ruling is expected any day.
Attorneys for Madison Square Garden executive James Dolan are firing back at a lawsuit that alleges he pressured a masseuse into unwanted sex while his band was touring with the Eagles, calling his accuser an “opportunist” who is “looking for a quick payday.”
In a motion filed Monday in Manhattan federal court, Dolan’s lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, in which a woman named Kellye Croft claims that Dolan coerced her into “unlawful and unwelcome sex acts” on repeated occasions during the 2013 tour.
Arguing that the allegations were “completely manufactured,” Dolan’s attorneys told the judge that it is “an unfortunate truth that some men, by virtue of their status, have become targets for opportunists looking for a quick payday.”
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“If this case were to proceed … plaintiff would be exposed as such an opportunist, and her claims would be soundly rejected for the lies that they are,” Dolan’s attorney lead counsel E. Danya Perry wrote. “But this action should never reach that stage, as plaintiff’s complaint is entirely deficient.”
Dolan is the majority owner/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a live music giant that operates the famed New York City arena in addition to Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the Las Vegas Sphere and other prominent venues.
Croft sued him in January, claiming she had been hired to serve as a massage therapist for Glenn Frey during the 2013 tour, on which Dolan’s band (JD & The Straight Shot) opened for Eagles. She says she thought the job was the “opportunity of a lifetime,” but that she quickly realized the real reason she was there: “Dolan was extremely assertive, and pressured Ms. Croft into unwanted sexual intercourse.”
The lawsuit also claimed that Dolan later facilitated an incident in which Croft was assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film producer whose many sexual assault allegations helped spark the #MeToo movement in 2017. Dolan previously served as a director at The Weinstein Company, and the lawsuit claimed that the two moguls were “close friends and business partners.”
In Monday’s response, Dolan’s attorneys took particular exception to the Weinstein allegations, calling them “scandalous and irrelevant” claims that had been designed to compensate for flaws in the case: “This transparent reliance on headline-grabbing, yet legally baseless, accusations of liability-by-association cannot save plaintiff’s case.”
Dolan’s motion also argued that the inclusion of Weinstein was actually a “fatal” weakness in one part of the case. They claimed that bankruptcy proceedings for The Weinstein Company resulted in a court order releasing all former directors from allegations that they aided and abetted Weinstein’s conduct — one of the claims leveled against Dolan in the complaint.
In a response statement on Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Douglas Wigdor called Dolan’s argument “shameful” and said his client had not participated in or benefited from the Weinstein bankruptcy, or even been notified of it.
“To somehow suggest that Dolan should receive a ‘get out of jail free’ card for his alleged intentional acts of trafficking our client, shows the extent to which he is willing to go to avoid having to defend the facts of our case,” Wigdor wrote.
Separately on Monday, attorneys for companies owned by music executive Irving Azoff also filed their own response to the case. While the lawsuit mostly centered on Dolan’s alleged conduct, it also accused the Azoff Company of violating federal sex trafficking laws by “facilitating Dolan’s behavior.”
In their motion, Azoff’s attorneys demanded not only that the claims be dismissed, but that Croft and her lawyers be legally sanctioned for filing “frivolous and vexatious” allegations without any real evidence to support them.
“As was explained to plaintiff’s counsel before the suit was commenced, the Azoff entities have never participated in any sex trafficking venture, and the complaint does not allege a single fact plausibly or remotely suggesting otherwise,” wrote the Azoff Company’s attorney Daniel Petrocelli.
“The decision by plaintiff and her counsel to include [such claims] in a federal pleading with nodiligence or investigation in order to publicly and falsely charge the Azoff Entities with despicable, illegal conduct fully justifies the imposition of … sanctions.”
In one portion of Croft’s complaint, her lawyers included a photograph of Dolan, Azoff and Weinstein standing together in 2015, saying that “these men were close to one another, and thus almost certainly knew details about each other’s personal lives.”
But in Monday’s motion seeking to dismiss the case and punish Croft’s lawyers, Azoff’s attorneys called the inclusion of Weinstein in the complaint a “gratuitous and unavailing” tactic that had been designed to prove “guilt-by-association” in the absence of any real evidence.
“Grasping at straws, plaintiff tries to link Weinstein to the Azoff entities by a single photo of Dolan, Weinstein, and Irving Azoff at an advertising trade conference in 2015,” Petrocelli wrote. “Awarding the Azoff entities their reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs in bringing this motion would deter plaintiff’s counsel from asserting such baseless, bad faith claims in the future.”
In his statement Wednesday, Croft’s attorney Wigdor called those arguments “meritless” and reiterated the allegations against Azoff’s companies: “We look forward to defeating these motions and moving forward with this litigation.”
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Could New York Knicks owner James Dolan be the next NBA franchise boss forced to sell the team by Commissioner Adam Silver?
We doubt it as Knicks fans have never seen their dreams come to fruition (championships, signing LeBron, etc.), but the loathed owner of New York’s favorite basketball team is facing some serious allegations. Both Dolan and Harvey Weinstein have been slapped with a lawsuit alleging they sexually assaulted a masseuse a decade ago. According to CNN, Kellye Croft filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday (Jan. 16), in which she claims that James Dolan forced her into unwanted sexual intercourse with him while she was giving him a massage in 2013.
Croft says she met Dolan while on tour with the Eagles. The then 23-year-old life’s changed when the Knicks owner got out of pocket and allegedly coerced her into doing something that left her scarred for life.
CNN reports:
While getting a massage, “Dolan pulled Ms. Croft towards him,” the lawsuit claims. “Ms. Croft tried to bring the massage to an end, but Dolan proceeded to come on even stronger, treating Ms. Croft’s resistance as part of a challenge or a game. Dolan then grabbed Ms. Croft’s hands, dragging her to a couch in the same room and forcing her hands between his knees as he sat down. Ms. Croft was adamant that she did not want to have any sexual interactions with Dolan, who was married at the time and over thirty years older than Ms. Croft.”
“She felt disgusted and terrified of the situation, but the extreme isolation she felt from others on the tour, coupled with Dolan’s attention to her, his assertions that he would take care of her, and her recognition that this man held immense power over everyone’s position on the tour—including hers—led her to submit to Dolan’s advances,” the lawsuit states.
But it didn’t end there. Croft also alleges that Dolan set up a meeting between herself and disgraced Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein in a hotel where the convicted rapist sexually assaulted her as well.
Both Dolan and Weinstein have denied the allegations with Dolan saying he considered Croft a “good person and is surprised she would agree to these claims.”
Croft is seeking both monetary and punitive damages, saying the encounters left her traumatized to the point that she couldn’t speak about the incidents for years.
More from CNN:
“I have suffered so profoundly because of what James Dolan and Harvey Weinstein did to me years ago, and it was not an easy decision to come forward and seek justice. But for me, to truly address my trauma, I need to seek accountability,” Croft said in a statement to CNN. ”My hope is that my lawsuit will force Dolan to acknowledge what he did to me and to take responsibility for the harm he has caused.”
Don’t be surprised if this gets settled out of court as Dolan wouldn’t want any of his dirty laundry being aired in public.
What do y’all think of the situation? Should Adam Silver force Dolan to sell the team should these allegations prove true? Let us know in the comments section below.
Madison Square Garden executive James Dolan is facing a sexual assault lawsuit that claims he pressured a masseuse into unwanted sex while his band was touring with the Eagles — and that he later facilitated an incident in which she was also assaulted by Harvey Weinstein.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (Jan. 15) in Manhattan federal court, Kellye Croft says that Dolan coerced her into “unlawful and unwelcome sex acts” on repeated occasions after she was hired to serve as a massage therapist for the Eagles’ Glenn Frey during the 2013 tour.
Croft says she thought the job on the concert tour — on which Dolan’s band JD & The Straight Shot opened for the Eagles — was “her big break” and the “opportunity of a lifetime.” But she says she quickly realized the real reason she was there.
“Dolan was extremely assertive, and pressured Ms. Croft into unwanted sexual intercourse with him,” writes Croft’s attorney, Douglas Wigdor. “Ms. Croft was disgusted by Dolan, but her youth and extreme loneliness while on the road with strangers, as well as Dolan’s immense power, made it possible for Dolan to manipulate Ms. Croft and lure her under his control.”
Dolan is the majority owner/CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp., a live music giant that operates the famed New York City arena in addition to Manhattan’s Radio City Music Hall, the Las Vegas Sphere and other prominent venues.
Tuesday’s lawsuit also claims that Dolan later secretly orchestrated a 2014 encounter between Croft and his friend Weinstein, the disgraced film producer whose many sexual assault allegations helped spark the #MeToo movement in 2017. Weinstein is currently serving a decades-long prison sentence after being convicted on multiple felony charges.
Croft’s lawyers say Dolan arranged the early 2014 meetup, during which Weinstein allegedly invited her to his hotel room under the guise of discussing an opportunity for her to work as a massage therapist for actors on movie sets. After she refused his “escalating” behavior and returned to her room, her lawyers say Weinstein chased her down the hall, “barged into Ms. Croft’s hotel room” and proceeded to sexually assault her.
In a response sent to Billboard, Dolan’s attorney, E. Danya Perry, said there was “absolutely no merit to any of the allegations against Mr. Dolan” and that the references to Weinstein were “simply meant to inflame.” Perry alleges the claims were an “act of retaliation” by Wigdor, describing him as “an attorney who has brought multiple cases against Mr. Dolan and has not, and cannot, win a judgment against him.”
“Mr. Dolan always believed Ms. Croft to be a good person and is surprised she would agree to these claims,” Perry wrote. “Bottom line, this is not a he said/she said matter and there is compelling evidence to back up our position. We look forward to proving that in court.”
In his own statement, Wigdor said that “our firm has not lost multiple cases to Dolan — that is a fabrication.” He said that with the filing of the lawsuit, “it is time to finally hold Dolan accountable for his outrageous conduct.”
In addition to Dolan and Weinstein, the lawsuit also names several entities owned by The Azoff Company, the privately held company founded by legendary music industry executive Irving Azoff. Though Azoff himself is not individually named as a defendant, the lawsuit claims he was “extremely close friends” with Dolan as well as a frequent business partner — and that Azoff’s companies thus enabled Dolan’s alleged abuse.
“In addition to the extremely close personal relationship between Dolan and Irving Azoff, Dolan was a critically important business partner for the Azoff Entities,” Croft’s lawyers write. “The Azoff Entities thus benefited from facilitating Dolan’s behavior to the extent it kept their partner, a notoriously erratic billionaire, happy.”
In a statement to Billboard, a representative for Azoff strongly denied the lawsuit’s allegations: “Irving Azoff is not a party to this lawsuit. Neither he nor his companies had any involvement in any alleged misconduct by others.”
An attorney for Weinstein did not immediately return a request for comment.
Sphere Entertainment has said it’s committed to working with alternative “forward-thinking cities around the world” after officially withdrawing plans to build a Sphere concert arena in London.
On Monday (Jan. 8), Sphere Entertainment’s sister company, Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE), which is owned by tycoon James Dolan, told British officials that it would not be proceeding with its long-standing proposal to build a Sphere venue in the British capital city.
The announcement came less than two months after London Mayor Sadiq Khan blocked plans for the 21,500-capacity, 300-foot-tall spherical building because of the impact he believed it would have on the surrounding area, including high energy use and the “significant light intrusion” it would cause local residents.
In a letter to the planning inspectorate seen by Billboard, Richard Constable, MSGE’s executive vp/global head of government affairs and social impact, told officials that “following careful review, we cannot continue to participate in a process that is merely a political football between rival parties.”
“It is extremely disappointing that Londoners will not benefit from the Sphere’s groundbreaking technology and the thousands of well-paying jobs it would have created,” wrote Constable, confirming that MSGE — acting on behalf of Sphere Entertainment — was officially withdrawing its application from the planning process.
The termination of MSGE’s plans for a London version of its $2 billion Sphere venue in Las Vegas follows years of controversy surrounding the project, which was due to be built on a five-acre plot of land in Stratford, East London (the site has been largely derelict since 2012 when it was used as a temporary coach park during the London Olympics).
A proposal for what was later christened MSG Sphere London was first submitted in 2019, but it immediately received strong opposition from local councillors and campaign groups, as well as AEG, the owner and operator of the 20,000-capacity The O2 arena located less than five miles away.
Despite residents’ concerns, The London Legacy Development Company provisionally greenlit the plans in March 2022 before they were subsequently overturned by Mayor Khan last November.
In a statement, Sphere Entertainment said it had informed Michael Gove — the U.K. secretary of state for levelling up, housing and communities, who initiated a review of the mayor’s decision in December — that it would not be moving forward with its plans for London and would not be participating in a review.
“We are committed to continuing to work collaboratively with forward-thinking cities around the world who are serious about bringing this next-generation entertainment experience to their communities,” said a spokesperson for Sphere Entertainment.
Sphere Entertainment Co., formerly Madison Square Garden Entertainment (MSGE), was formed in April when MSGE’s traditional live entertainment business, which includes the Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall venues in New York, split off from the Sphere and MSG Networks businesses. Sphere retained a 33% stake in MSGE.
The five-acre site earmarked for the London Sphere, which MSGE bought for around £60 million ($76 million), is now expected to be put up for sale.
Meanwhile, the developer is understood to be in talks with multiple international markets about rolling out the Sphere model in other global cities, following its high-grossing debut in Las Vegas last year with a residency by U2.
In December, the New York Post reported that Dolan was meeting with investors in Abu Dhabi about building a second Sphere in the United Arab Emirates capital. Also last year, several South Korean newspapers reported that the city of Hanam was another potential future location after talks took place between city officials and representatives of MSGE. Sphere Entertainment Co. declined to comment on those reports when contacted by Billboard.
Sphere, the stunning venue that has transformed the Las Vegas skyline and redefined the concert-going experience, generated $4.1 million from U2’s first two concerts in September, its owner, Sphere Entertainment Co., reported in its quarterly earnings release on Wednesday (Nov. 8).
The $2.3 billion Sphere is a 366-foot tall, 516-foot wide spherical venue with a wrap-around video screen that envelopes a seated audience of 17,600. Sphere’s external skin — called Exosphere — is covered in 580,000 square feet of programmable LED exterior lights that advertises the venue’s technological capabilities.
Sphere also made $2.6 million in additional revenue, primarily from advertising on the Exosphere that began in September.
With only two concerts under its belt through the end of September, Sphere’s earnings release was about the venue’s potential, not its revenue to date. “Our journey with Sphere is just beginning,” said executive chairman/CEO James Dolan during Wednesday’s earnings call. “And while it will take some time for Sphere to realize its full potential, we’re off to a great start.”
U2’s original 25-show residency has been extended by an additional 11 shows that will occur in January and February 2024. The company expects to host two additional residencies in the second half of the fiscal year that ends June 30, 2024, according to Dolan. “We’re having conversations with artists across a wide variety of genres, including discussing runs of varying lengths,” he said.
Sphere had an adjusted operating loss of $83.1 million in the quarter, an increase of $19 million from the prior-year period. It also had $2.8 million of venue operating expenses in the quarter and $2.2 million of event-related expenses. An additional $2.1 million in advertising costs were related to the Oct. 6 launch of The Sphere Experience featuring the film Postcard from Earth by Darren Aronofsky. Selling, general and administrative expenses amounted to $84.2 million.
The Las Vegas venue is the first of what Sphere Entertainment expects to be multiple Sphere venues. Dolan was light on specifics but said there is “a great deal of interest and substantive discussions” in several additional markets. “I will say that it does look like Sphere will be a global brand,” he said, “and so we should expect the expansion globally rather than just in the U.S.”
Sphere Entertainment had total revenue of $118 million in its fiscal first quarter ended September 30, down 4% from the prior-year period. MSG Networks contributed $110.2 million of revenue, down 10% year over year. MSG Networks, which operates two regional sports networks, joined Sphere following a spin-off of MSG Entertainment in April. That same month, Sphere reached an agreement to sell its stake in Tao Group Hospitality to global luxury lifestyle company Mohari Hospitality for about $300 million.
Shares of Sphere Entertainment fell as much as 8.4% to $30.58 on Wednesday morning before recovering to $31.90, down 4.4%, by mid-afternoon. The stock price took a bigger hit on Monday, however, dropping 9.6% following the company’s announcement late on Friday that CFO Gautam Ranji had left the company. Dolan attributed Ranji’s departure to Sphere being a new type of business. “It’s pretty challenging,” he said. “I think we both came to the conclusion that it probably wasn’t a great fit.”
Financial metrics for the first fiscal quarter:
Total revenue of $118 million, down 4% year over year.
Adjusted operating loss of $57.9 million, up 88% year over year.
Net income of $66.4 million, up from a $44 million net loss in the prior-year period.
Sphere revenue of $7.8 million.
Sphere event-related revenue of $4.1 million.
MSG Networks revenue of $110.2 million, down 10% year over year.
Everything about Sphere, the state-of-the-art new live-entertainment venue on the Las Vegas Strip, seems designed to shock and awe.
There’s its size: At 366 feet tall by 516 feet wide, it’s big enough to fit the Statue of Liberty (a fact the executives involved in the project very much like to note), making it the world’s largest spherical structure. Stand outside, and it’s impossible to focus on anything but its skyline-dominating, dynamic LED screen Exosphere; stand inside, on the floor of its main event space, and cower beneath its 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and towers to an apex of 240 feet above.
And then there’s its sheer capability: When it opens Sphere on Sept. 29 with the premiere of its U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere show, U2 will be playing an eye-popping 25 dates at a 20,000-capacity facility in the Nevada desert. It all seems tailored to elicit the same response: the conviction that, after picking one’s jaw up off the floor, live entertainment will be changed forever.
And it very well might be. As the sands of the concert business shift, Sphere’s model — prioritizing cutting-edge production, embracing an unorthodox residency model and rounding out its calendar with high-margin programming produced itself — provides intriguing paths forward for major touring artists and the arenas and stadiums they play.
But as Sphere prepares to open its doors, significant questions remain about who will play the venue next, how it will continue to draw fans (and enough of them) in the coming years and what it needs to do to become — and remain — financially viable. And with its $2.3 billion price tag, nearly double the $1.2 billion initially estimated when the project was announced in 2018, the legacy of the figure behind the project, James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of both Sphere Entertainment and the closely related Madison Square Garden Entertainment, feels inextricably linked to Sphere’s success. (Dolan declined an interview for this story.)
For now, though, existential questions about Sphere will have to wait. There’s a U2 residency to launch — no small feat — and, a week after that, the premiere of Postcard From Earth, the Darren Aronofsky-directed nature film that Sphere will screen from one to four times daily on days U2 doesn’t play and that promises to harness even more of the venue’s considerable stable of technological bells and whistles (while also, hopefully, quickly becoming a reliable revenue driver).
“This is essentially a new medium, which we call ‘experiential,’ ” Dolan said on an August earnings call. “Sphere is a brand-new, never-before-seen medium — and we believe it will take the world by storm.”
A month before Sphere’s scheduled opening, David Dibble, CEO of the Sphere Entertainment subsidiary MSG Ventures, is in a jovial mood, sitting on Zoom before a background rendering of the cosmos, the starship Enterprise soaring through space.
He drops references to everything from the ancient Greeks to the Gutenberg press to scenes from Jaws and Animal House — and links all these things to Sphere. The project has dominated Dibble’s life since Dolan first broached the concept to him in his office one evening in late 2015, shortly after the sale of longtime Dolan family asset Cablevision was finalized for $17 billion.
“He leaned back, looked out the window,” recalls Dibble, who was Cablevision’s chief technology officer before joining MSG after the former’s sale. “He says, ‘You know, Dibble, let’s reinvent the live-entertainment industry.’ Those were his exact words. And I said, ‘Oh, OK. Well, thinking small, are we?’”
For “at least three hours,” the two men “brainstormed and argued and laughed.” Dolan was resolute that his new venue should have an iconic shape. After ruling out a pyramid or a cube, he grabbed Dibble’s pad of graph paper, scribbling a circle and a stick figure, and holding it up. “I got it,” he told Dibble. “MSG Globe.” Dibble nixed the name; Dolan asked him why.
“I said, ‘Shakespeare’s got ‘Globe,’ man, come on. You’re good, Dolan, but you’re not going to compete with Shakespeare.’” Dolan paused and recast his concept: MSG Sphere.
According to Sphere executive vp/COO Rich Claffey, who oversaw venue management for MSG Entertainment’s full portfolio before assuming his current role, Dolan began discussing Sphere in specific terms around 2015 — but had interest in a venue that would address similar concerns even earlier.
A cross-section rendering of Sphere.
Sphere Entertainment
“We would always talk about how we could make multiple events in a day happen without having huge changeovers and things of that nature,” says Claffey, who joined the MSG family as a stagehand at its flagship arena in 1983. “Ten years ago, we were trying to figure out the best way where we could do major productions, all in the same day, and [what it would look like] if we ever built a building.”
When Dolan conceived Sphere, he didn’t have Vegas specifically in mind and asked his team to prepare a list of candidate locations, according to Dibble. But around this time, he explains, MSG connected with Sheldon Adelson and Rob Goldstein of the Las Vegas Sands, then still owner of The Venetian, who found the idea compelling and “in their view, fit the direction that Las Vegas was going” — away from gaming and toward entertainment.
“Live entertainment defines this town, more so than gaming,” says Kate Wik, chief marketing officer for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the government agency tasked with marketing and promoting southern Nevada. “It has been over a decade that nongaming revenues exceed that of gaming revenues. We are an entertainment destination.”
Sands and MSG inked a ground-lease agreement for a plot directly behind The Venetian, and the project was announced in February 2018. “We had no idea how we were going to do this. I mean, none,” Dibble says with a palpable sense of amazement that Sphere was ultimately built. “All we knew was what we were going to call it and what the shape was going to be.”
Populous — the acclaimed architectural design firm behind facilities including Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena and Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum — was attached from the jump, with AECOM added as general contractor in 2019, when construction began; AECOM estimated the venue would cost $1.7 billion. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and attendant supply chain problems, the project was soon marked by delays and other issues. In late 2020, MSG Entertainment relieved AECOM of its role and took construction in-house. (AECOM remained involved with the project in a support role under a new services agreement.) Some key executives did not see the project through, including Jayne McGivern, MSG Entertainment president of development and construction, and Lucas Watson, MSG Sphere president, who parted ways with the company in 2021 and February 2023, respectively.
There was “a lot of skepticism around this project over the years it was constructed,” says Paul Golding, an equity research analyst at Macquarie Group who tracks several companies across the live sector, including MSG Entertainment and Sphere Entertainment. And some of that skepticism extended beyond challenges in conventional construction to the novelty of the tech that would make the venue much more than just another impressive Vegas edifice. “There was, throughout the construction process — and even starting from the early days — some concern [among the investment community] as to whether some of these characteristics or features would be feasible, and if so, at what cost,” Golding adds.
The Exosphere.
Sphere Entertainment
The team wanted best-in-class audio and visual capabilities — some of which didn’t even exist yet at the project’s inception. For the former, it partnered with Holoplot, a Berlin-based audio startup, to design Sphere Immersive Sound, which uses the German company’s patented 3D Audio-Beamforming technology to ensure that listeners anywhere in the venue hear identical mixes at identical volumes; algorithmic machine learning and environmental data collected in real time by sensors throughout Sphere further refine and standardize the sound attendees hear regardless of where they’re seated. And to ideate the venue’s LED display and 4D technologies, Sphere Studios, a Burbank, Calif.-based interdisciplinary team spanning creative, production, technology and software pros, launched to serve as Sphere’s in-house creative and production unit. Its proudest accomplishment to date is Big Sky, an innovative high-resolution camera system that far outpaces current industry standards and can produce content suited for the venue’s massive screen.
And as much interest as Sphere’s technology has generated, its business model is also challenging conventional wisdom about how buildings should be operated, particularly at the arena level. Traditionally, Dolan explained on the August earnings call, “if you have a team, they’re the first tenants in, but that generally only occupies 40 to 50 nights a year, and the rest of the time you’re renting out and you have a limited revenue stream.” Sphere, by contrast, “will be busy theoretically 365 days a year, because when we’re not bringing in someone like a U2, etc., we’re running our own content, and that business is a high-margin business.”
By all appearances, U2 isn’t playing Sphere because it’s forsaking the road or has a particular affinity for Vegas. Rather, from the multimedia-rich 1992-93 Zoo TV Tour promoting Achtung Baby and Zooropa to the 2009-11 U2 360° Tour, with “The Claw” — its striking, four-legged stage structure plopped on stadium floors around the world — to even Bono and The Edge’s wild, ill-fated Broadway experiment with Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, the band has pushed the boundaries of live entertainment for more than three decades. Its Sphere show, described by a press release as “a futuristic Achtung Baby adventure in a unique desert landscape,” is another step in that progression. (U2, creative directors Es Devlin and Willie Williams, and other members of its creative and production teams were unavailable to participate in this story; manager Irving Azoff declined to comment and a representative for longtime Live Nation promoter Arthur Fogel did not respond to requests for comment.)
“U2 is on record publicly saying they wouldn’t have played Vegas if it weren’t for the Sphere,” Dibble says. “I think that that thesis is probably going to lather, rinse, repeat across a pretty broad spectrum of entertainers.”
Given U2’s success selling tickets at Sphere so far — as its residency launches, multiple dates are sold out and several others have extremely limited inventory — and the substantial creative investment made by it and the venue for U2:UV, Sphere could take a page out of the book of other popular Vegas residencies and extend the band’s run. After all, U2 announced only five dates initially, adding 20 more in three waves to meet demand. “I’m pretty sure we could have kept going,” says Josephine Vaccarello, executive vp, live at MSG Entertainment, who oversees booking for all venues across the company’s portfolio and added Sphere to her purview in January. Might that happen? “TBD. I think we’ll see.”
The Exosphere.
Sphere Entertainment
But who will play Sphere following the famed Irish rockers? The venue doesn’t have any announced bookings after U2 on Dec. 16 — and its team has been mum about what its calendar will look like in 2024 and beyond. “We expect to announce additional residencies shortly, which are slated to take place later this fiscal year,” Dolan said on August’s earnings call, citing a “real robust interest from the artist community.” But, he noted, “we expect maybe not as high profile as U2, but close, because those are the kinds of artists that have been coming to talk to us.”
“There are tons of conversations happening right now,” Vaccarello says with excitement. “It’s literally — it’s every genre.”
Still, in a report published after August’s earnings call, Macquarie expressed concern about the lack of additional concert announcements and said Dolan’s warning of future bookings being potentially lower profile than U2 “softens our view on venue rental revenues.”
In Claffey’s estimation, artists “probably would have to be able to do six to eight shows to be viable, just to make it worth their while and our while.” And though Vaccarello reiterates that Sphere’s doors are open to one-off touring acts, she’s skeptical that such plays are the best fit for them. “With the technology that exists within Sphere, it doesn’t make sense to come into Sphere if you’re not going to use the media plane [Sphere’s term for its LED screen] and let it do all the things that it can do,” she says. “Otherwise, you would just do your show in an arena.”
Sin City already has multiple such venues, including the relatively new T-Mobile Arena, the MGM Grand Garden Arena and an additional, in-the-works facility being plotted by Oak View Group, not to mention a just-approved baseball stadium and the recently opened Allegiant Stadium.
“There is a lot of competition, so if you’re really just doing a one-off [in Vegas], I could see why you would just go to one of those other venues,” says Jarred Arfa, executive vp/head of global music at the newly formed agency Independent Artist Group. At IAG, Arfa represents a roster that includes Metallica, Neil Young, Def Leppard, The Strokes and Billy Joel — the lattermost will notably conclude his monthly MSG residency after a decade in July 2024 — and he says several clients have expressed interest in playing Sphere. “What I’m curious to see is, does the Sphere help an artist sell tickets?” he wonders. “If we have an artist who’s maybe worth one or two arena plays in Vegas, does the Sphere make it seven?”
Both Sphere executives and Arfa offer a similar refrain: that the venue’s technology, and its capacity to allow artists to create unique shows that can’t play anywhere else, heavily incentivizes extended runs. And while Sphere’s decision to lean into residencies isn’t particularly innovative, the scale at which it plans to do so is. Massive stars with Vegas residencies like Adele and Usher play to far smaller rooms (the 4,300-capacity Colosseum at Caesars Palace and the 5,200-capacity Dolby Live at Park MGM, respectively) than Sphere. As Arfa says: “It’s weird, because it’s an arena size, but it’s the residency model.”
“If a roller coaster only went up, that’s what it’s like,” says Guy Barnett, Sphere Entertainment senior vp, brand strategy and creative development, 10 days before U2 debuts at the venue. “You don’t often get the chance to launch a brand that dabbles with so many entertaining things, from robots to giant screens to Aronofsky.”
Barnett helped Dolan develop an early “pitch reel” for Sphere when Dolan was developing the concept in 2016 and returned to the project in early 2023 to guide the venue as it established its identity. While concerts are an important component of Sphere’s business model, they’re far from its only revenue stream — and possibly not its most critical one. Sphere’s overall commercial success relies on how well it can establish itself as more than just a place for music, but as “a fusion of science and art, and what the outcome of those two things are,” Barnett says. “It has been our mission to fuse those two circles of influence — that we take science and art to create something wonderful.”
To that end, the venue has conceived something called The Sphere Experience, which starts the moment patrons enter the venue. Outside of the bowl-shaped theater, one of five identical, humanoid robots named Aura greets visitors and interacts with them about the venue’s technology. Activations in the atrium “tell the role of technology in humankind,” according to Dibble; he’s particularly excited about mathematical equations printed across the space with QR codes that, when scanned, explain how the formulas were applied in engineering Sphere.
Interior rendering of Sphere.
Sphere Entertainment
But The Sphere Experience’s centerpiece is exclusive content produced by Sphere Studios to be presented in the bowl — upon its opening, the Aronofsky-directed Postcard From Earth, a narrative-meets-documentary experience that was filmed on every continent. The show flexes the full potential of Sphere’s 4D multisensory technology, including effects like vibration, wind, scent and temperature fluctuations; it will debut with a per-show capacity of 5,000, with the possibility to increase attendance in the future (Sphere has 10,000 seats equipped with haptic capabilities). Across up to four showings, as many as 20,000 people will be able to experience Postcard From Earth on some days this fall, each paying between $49 and $249; as many at Sphere note, far more patrons will initially engage with the venue through Postcard From Earth rather than U2.
“It’s a new medium, and we were really figuring it out as we went along,” Aronofsky tells Billboard. “The joke was often that we were building the plane while learning how to fly it. And so I think now that we have made Postcard From Earth, which uses the form in perhaps its most obvious way, I look forward to seeing what filmmakers in the future do in this medium.”
On Sphere’s August earnings call, Dolan called original content like Postcard From Earth “sort of the backbone of the business. That is basically a high-margin business, because you’ve already invested your capital. You’ve made your show, you’ve built your attraction, and now your running costs are basically things like ushers, security, merch, those kinds of things. So the return on that is pretty strong.”
Postcard From Earth is slated to run well into 2024 and possibly beyond; it will likely become the first piece of content in Sphere’s library of nonmusical programming that exists in perpetuity.
“A core component, in our view, of the revenue picture for Sphere will be Postcard From Earth” and future Sphere Experience programming at the venue, Macquarie’s Golding says, though he expresses caution because tickets are “at a price point that is significantly higher, in our view, than what the traditional film exhibitor might charge. We are watching to see whether that demand comes through, given the large amount of supply [number of screenings and available tickets] relative to visitation to Las Vegas.”
In a report published in August, Macquarie outlined a scenario where Sphere runs 710 shows in fiscal year 2025 with 9,000 optimal seats per show — which would come out to a supply of about 6.4 million “optimal seats.” In 2022, 38.8 million people visited Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which has a metro area population of 2.9 million.
But another core facet of Sphere’s business revolves around the people who never even walk through its doors. The 580,000-square-foot Exosphere envelops the structure — and offers creative and financial opportunity. Since coming to life on July Fourth, Exosphere has become an eyeball, a tennis ball, Mars and more.
“Sphere has not opened yet, and it’s already one of the top must-see attractions for this destination,” says Wik of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, describing it as “a character in and of itself” that people are already lining up to see.
And its features, of course, aren’t merely aesthetic. “Following our demonstration of the Exosphere’s capabilities, we’ve seen a significant increase in inbound interest from potential advertisers and marketing partners,” Dolan said in August.
On Sept. 1, Sphere launched two Exosphere partnerships that illustrate the primary types of programming it will display. Turkish American artist Refik Anadol became the first creative to make Exosphere his canvas with the debut of Machine Hallucinations: Sphere, an abstract, immersive digital experience he describes as an artificial intelligence “data sculpture.” Meanwhile, YouTube became the first brand to generate a campaign specifically for Exosphere, using it to promote its subscription product, NFL Sunday Ticket. For Sphere, the challenge will be balancing these two purposes — and finding creative ways to fuse them.
In conversations with Dolan, Barnett has sought to “[make] sure that we’re always, within reason, around 50/50,” he says. “We’re leading the way and inspiring a lot of our commercial partners to see what they can do on this. Part of the art is to make sure that we are always surprising and delighting our audiences, and we want our commercial partners to do the same.”
But while Dolan has encouraged patience — “You should not expect the venue to reach its full economic potential right from the start,” he said in August — financial realities may pressure Sphere to behave more aggressively in its business, including when it comes to commercial Exosphere deals. Sphere’s higher-than-expected price tag “puts a greater degree of pressure on management to utilize the capacity of the venue,” from programming and booking to brand partnerships to finding operational efficiencies, Golding says.
While the Vegas Sphere experiment unfolds, its team isn’t stopping there: Though planners have been stymied by government red tape and local opposition, another Sphere has been in the works for London’s Stratford neighborhood since 2018.
“Vegas is the first; by no means is it the last,” Dibble says. “By the way, we’ve got designs that can go from 2,000 to 20,000 people [in capacity], all maintaining the basic geometry of the bowl so that our content is portable.”
Don’t expect them to do it on their own the next time around, though. “We want partners,” Dolan said in August. “We’re looking at more of a franchise-type model. … Going forward, construction of additional Spheres will be, for this company, capital-light.” With construction lessons learned from the Vegas project and the possibility of smaller future Spheres, Dolan anticipates some iterations of the facility could be built in less than two years.
“The company has talked in the past about using this venue as a model for future opportunities to deploy this venue with partners or by licensing the design and the technology and the expertise,” Golding says. “It’ll be interesting to see if its success — if, in fact, it is successful — lends itself to other venue developers and managers seeking to deploy this format in lieu of what might be a more traditional opportunity in their respective geographies.”
Back in Vegas, as Sphere’s opening looms, the venue’s team continues to project confidence — with total sincerity, it seems. “If we’d listened to skeptics, we would have folded our tent years ago,” Dibble says without a hint of worry, citing the dozens of patents Sphere has secured to ward off imitators. “We think it’s going to be the hallmark of what is going to define the next generation of live entertainment.”
Or, as Dolan put it on August’s earnings call: “The proof is in the pudding — and the pudding is about to show up.”