Sphere
03/21/2025
What was new compared to last year’s run of Dead Forever shows?
03/21/2025
When the Eagles began their residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere back in September, they also debuted a Third Encore fan experience at the neighboring Venetian Resort. The space allowed fans to go inside a re-creation of the famed Troubadour venue where the California rockers got their start in the 1970s; legend has it that Don Henley and Glenn Frey met at the West Hollywood club.This year, Live Nation’s travel and music company Vibee expanded the VIP experience to include a Hotel California pop-up, paying tribute to the band’s 1976 album and its immortal title track, which has opened each Sphere show in epic fashion. Just like the Troubadour re-creation, the Hotel California installation includes memorabilia from the band’s archive, including Joe Walsh’s personal collection of hotel keys, a neon sign from the original Hotel California Tour, and unseen photos from the era.
A hotel lobby desk in the space also doubles as a bar — serving pink champagne on ice, of course — with the “Manager on Duty” listed as Irving Azoff, the band’s real-life manager for the past 50-plus years.
The most interactive piece of the space is three hotel room doors that open to three different moments in the song, with each room number representing the time code of the corresponding lyrics. Room 052 takes you to a “dark desert highway,” with a circa-1970s car dashboard leading the way; room 118 has a “mission bell” hanging above the doorway; and room 354 leads to a spooky mirrored hallway in search of “the passage back to the place I was before.”
On Thursday night (March 20), Dead & Company return to Sphere for their second-round residency, and their own Vibee space has popped back up on the floor above Third Encore. But Eagles fans can make their way back to the Troub and Hotel California when the band returns next month for four more dates.
Earlier this week, Eagles announced even more Sphere dates, with four concerts set for this September — marking their one-year anniversary of first playing the venue. Other Sphere concerts coming this summer: the first residencies for country star Kenny Chesney (starting in May) and pop all-stars the Backstreet Boys.
For more information on Vibee VIP travel packages that include Third Encore access, which also allows fans to buy exclusive merch not available at the concerts, click here. And for your first look inside the Hotel California pop-up, see the photos below.
Harry Styles is not planning a residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere, and according to a spokesperson for the venue, he never was. In a statement shared exclusively with Billboard Thursday morning (March 13) following a week of rumors purporting that the pop star was in talks to play 35 dates at The Sphere, the representative […]

Sphere Entertainment reported quarterly revenue of $308.3 million, slightly lower than the year-ago period, owing to half-a-dozen fewer shows, the Las Vegas venue company reported on Monday (March 3).
Sphere — which chairman/CEO James Dolan reminded analysts on a call is still basically a brand-new company — reported an operating loss of $142.9 million, a $16.7 million improvement compared to the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, adjusted operating income of $32.9 million was down $18.6 million from the prior-year quarter and events-related revenue of $54.4 million was $800,000 less than the year ago period. The quarter included shows by the Eagles and Anyma as well as the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which returned to Sphere in November as part of a multi-year deal.
With additional shows from the Eagles and Anyma and upcoming residencies by country star Kenny Chesney and Backstreet Boys, Dolan said 2025 will be marked by continued demand and improved operating efficiency.
Trending on Billboard
“This year, the biggest opportunities are the nuts and bolts of how well we operate the business. That is going to provide a boost,” Dolan said on a call with analysts. “Longer term, the expansion of more Spheres is what is going to deliver the most [return].”
Sphere grossed $169 million, while MSG Networks generated $139.3 million, for the quarter ending Dec. 31. Sphere’s operating loss of $107.9 million on an adjusted basis was $800,000, while MSG Networks reported an operating loss of $35 million. On an adjusted basis, MSG reported an adjusted operating income of $33.7 million.
Advertising on the outside of Sphere, which the company calls Exosphere, plus suite license fees generated $20.3 million, a $2.7 million improvement from the prior-year quarter.
Here’s what else you need to know from the earnings call.
In addition to Sphere Abu Dhabi, the company is working on mini-Spheres.
Last fall, Sphere Entertainment announced plans for a second Sphere venue in Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that would be entirely funded by the UAE’s Department of Culture and Tourism. The new venue will be operated as a franchise, with Sphere Entertainment receiving a franchise initiation fee that grants Abu Dhabi the right to use the company’s intellectual property and content from The Sphere Experience, like Postcard from Earth and V-U2: An Immersive Concert Film.
As plans for Sphere in Abu Dhabi move forward, the company is exploring smaller versions of Sphere that could seat around 5,000, compared to the Las Vegas venue’s 20,000-seat design, Dolan said.
“We’re currently working on the architecture of our smaller Sphere” and identifying mid-sized cities that could present opportunities, Dolan said. “We’re looking to take advantage of the content we’ve created already and the business we’ve created already and bringing it out to other markets. Right now, we’re in the planning and design phase.”
While the cost of playing Sphere is “high” for artists, demand is higher.
Dolan acknowledged that playing Sphere, a first-of-its-kind venue, comes with a slew of costs that can set performing artists back. But acts like Chesney, who will kick off a 15-show residency in May, and Backstreet Boys, who start an 18-show residency this summer, save on the cost of touring multiple cities, Dolan said.
“We know that the content costs are high for a band, but they are offset by the fact that it’s a residency,” he said. “So a touring band has to go to 50 cities, move place to place. The bottom line for bands is they do better.”
In response to a question about the biggest opportunities ahead, Dolan said the demand from fans, artists and corporate sponsors is overwhelming. The Las Vegas venue has 55 shows planned for the first half of 2025, up from 37 in the first half of 2024.
“We have a desire to do those concerts, and artists have a desire to play the Sphere,” Dolan said. “If there is anything that is going to limit concerts, it’s probably going to be [demand].”
Expect more concert videos like the one made of U2’s Sphere show.
Dolan declined to share details about the newest The Sphere Experience, but he said it’s likely the company will do more concert films like V-U2 in the future owing to the success of that show and the low cost of creating content like it.
These films, which are akin to “attending the concert without having the band there,” cost less than $500,000 to record and create, Dolan said, adding that they have more performance recordings in the wings.
“The cost of that product is quite low, and I expect that we will continue to build up the library and that you’ll be seeing those kinds of experiences for years to come,” Dolan said.
The Backstreet Boys are extending their upcoming residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere. On Monday morning (Feb. 24) the boys-to-man band announced the addition of shows on August 15, 16 and 17, bringing the total amount of announced residency gigs so far to 18.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The band — AJ McLean, Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough — are the first pop group booked to perform at the Sphere, with McLean telling Billboard last week that they are planning “one incredible experience” for the “Into The Millennium” run that Carter promised would giver fans “sensory overload.”
The Live Nation-produced run will find the group performing their entire career-peak 1999 Millennium album in full along with greatest hits and their new single, “Hey,” at the shows that will kick off on July 11. The gigs will continue throughout the rest of the month, with gigs on July 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 24, 26 and 27, followed by shows on August 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10.
Trending on Billboard
Tickets for the new dates will go on sale first through the BSB Fan Club pre-sale beginning Tuesday (Feb. 25) at 9 a.m. PT. Fans who previously signed up for the Artist Pre-Sale can access tickets for the three added dates beginning on Wednesday (Feb. 26) at 9 a.m. PT, followed by a general on-sale kicking off on Friday (Feb. 28) at 9 a.m. PT; click here for details.
BSB will make history as the first pop band to touch down in the futuristic arena that to date has hosted U2, Phish, Dead & Company, the Eagles, EDM act Anyma and, later this spring, Kenny Chesney. “Die hard fans are going to get a great experience, a great nostalgic moment,” McLean told Billboard. “Even just playing the whole Millennium album, there’s some deep cuts in there that we were just discussing the other day,” Dorough added. “[We were] reminiscing about some of the songs like ‘The Perfect Fan’ and ‘No One Else Comes Close to You’ [and ‘Spanish’] Eyes,’ which are songs that the fans probably haven’t heard since the Millennium tour.”
The 25th anniversary celebration of the album that topped the Billboard 200 for 10 weeks and has sold more than 24 million copies to date will coincide with the July 11 release of Millennium 2.0, a two-CD collection featuring a remastered version of the original, along with six demos from the sessions for the album, b-sides from international releases, six live tracks and the previously unheard track “Hey.”
The Backstreet Boys will be the first pop group to take the stage at Las Vegas’ Sphere. The man band announced the dates for their summer 2025 “Into the Millennium” residency at the futuristic venue, which will find them performing nine shows in July.
“Fans can expect an unforgettable experience as the Backstreet Boys bring their legendary Millennium album to life, alongside a selection of their greatest hits,” read a statement announcing the run of shows, which will find the group performing such hits as “I Want It That Way” and “Larger Than Life” in the venue that has wowed attendees with its immersive sound and wrap-around, high-tech visuals.
The group — Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, AJ McLean, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough — will perform at the Sphere on July 11, 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26 and 27. Fans can sign up for an artist presale now (through Feb. 17 at 10 p.m. PT) here for the first six dates. The Backstreet Boys Fan Club presale will kick off on Feb. 18 at 9 a.m. PT, with the artist presale launching on Feb. 19 at 9 a.m. PT. Additional presales will run throughout next week ahead of the general onsale that begins on Feb. 21 at 9 a.m. PT here.
Trending on Billboard
Tickets for the final three announced shows are available now via an artist presale through Feb. 17 at 10 p.m. PT here. The Fan Club presale for those shows will begin on Feb. 18 at 11 a.m. PT, with an artist presale beginning Feb. 19 at 11 a.m. PT, followed by additional presales throughout the week until the general onsale begins on Feb. 21 at 11 a.m. PT here.
“We’re heading ‘Into The Millennium’ once again! 🌐🩵 Relive your Backstreet Boys Y2K memories, but this time… LARGER THAN LIFE at @SphereVegas starting this July!,” the band said in an Instagram announcement that included images of the quintet projected on the outside of the venue.
U2 helped launch the venue in Sept. 2023 with their U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere residency, which had them stay put through March of 2024, making way for a four-show run by Phish and a 30-show stint by Dead & Company. The Eagles will play 32 shows in a run that kicked off in Sept. 2024 and is currently slated to run through an April 12 gig. EDM artist Anyma’s 12-show run kicked off on Dec. 27 and is slated to wrap on March 2, with Dead & Co. slipping back in for 18 more shows from March-May of this year, after which Kenny Chesney will touch down for 15 shows in May and June.
Check out the Sphere announcement below.
Anyma has been spending a lot of time at Sphere amid his ongoing residency, but the producer’s first meeting with the venue in April of 2023 didn’t go exactly as planned.
“We had an appointment to go at 3:00,” says Anyma’s agent, CAA’s Ferry Rais-Shaghaghi. “I show up there, and he doesn’t show up. I’m calling like, ‘Dude, where are you? We have this appointment.’ He’s like, ‘I’m in a studio session, just hit me up after.’”
So, Rais-Shaghaghi stepped inside a smaller version of the Las Vegas venue erected in Burbank, Calif., that’s used as a demonstration and testing space. There, he says, his mind “was blown by the capabilities of what it could do.” He walked back outside, called Anyma, the electronic music artist born Matteo Milleri, and said, “Dude, you need to see this. This is built for you.”
Trending on Billboard
Milleri went to check it out the very next day and, after seeing Sphere’s capabilities, called Rais-Shaghaghi with a directive: “You have to get this done.”
Fifteen months later, in July 2024, Anyma was announced as the first-ever electronic headliner at Sphere, the cutting-edge venue that opened in Las Vegas in September 2023. Anyma’s show opened Dec. 27, with its first eight dates selling 137,000 tickets and grossing $21 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. The final four shows will happen Feb. 27-28 and March 1-2.
With Vegas already an established destination for dance music, there had been a lot of talk about which dance artist would be the first to play the venue.
“It’s a big approval process, and for it to be probably the hottest venue in the world, you’ve got to understand the list of people that want to go in there,” says Rais-Shaghaghi, who started working with the melodic techno artist in 2023.
Anyma had a particularly strong case for being a fit. Visuals are a crucial element at Sphere, which centers on a 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and towers to a height of 240 feet. Anyma had already done significant visual world-building, carving out a singular and well-established aesthetic in both his solo output and as one half of the duo Tale Of Us. (Anyma released his debut album, Genesys, in 2023 with Genesys II coming last year. Both were released on Interscope Records.) Technology has also been deeply embedded into his output, with the producer over the years releasing NFTs that debuted art from the Anyma project, with the artist and his team using this project to blur the lines between show visuals and fine art.
Incorporated during live shows, this imagery melded concepts related to futurism, transhumanism, space, life, death, rebirth, apocalypse and intimacy and set them to a style of pummeling melodic techno favored in places like Burning Man and Tulum that’s grown in global influence and mainstream popularity over the last few years.
Anyma also had a strong track record of moving hard tickets, a historically soft area for many electronic acts. Tale Of Us’ Afterlife event series, headlined by the duo and featuring a collection of support artists, has happened around the world and featured imagery on massive screens as large as 65 feet tall.
Eight Afterlife shows in Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico held between February and May 2024 sold 228,000 tickets and grossed $19 million, according to numbers reported to Billboard Boxscore. Afterlife (which is also the name of Tale Of Us’ label) also sold 37,200 tickets and grossed $4.2 million over two shows at the L.A. State Historic Park in October 2023.
“When we were starting to really push boundaries and break records with attendance and sales, it was like, ‘Where do we go next?’” says Rais-Shaghaghi. “Then I started hearing about Sphere… It’s an almost 18,000-capacity venue. Who has done that business, not only in North America, but globally?”
Anyma having done that kind of business, he continues, “Was a huge factor, because Vegas is a destination. People from all around the world are going to [Sphere]. If you’re planning to do a show there, you have to do at least six to 10 shows for the financials to make sense, and if you’re doing 10, that’s 180,000 tickets. You can’t just be like, ‘I did L.A. and New York and blew them out.’ You have to have a global business. We’ve done stuff in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, South and North America. We had that.”
In terms of why the residency ultimately landed with Anyma and not Tale Of Us, Rais-Shaghaghi says, “Anyma is really the visual component of the project, and the one that really created all the NFTs, storylines and the visual elements. The focus really became building that into, in a sense, a movie that Matteo directs and creates. It just made the most sense because of the characters, because of the storyline and obviously having a vast amount of music that he was working on and exploring a bit outside of the techno underground world.” (In regard to the future of Tale Of Us, he says “both guys are super-focused on their solo projects right now.”)
Knowing the creative universe Anyma created could be dramatically expanded at Sphere, Anyma’s team began planning and production for the show shortly after Milleri and Rais-Shaghaghi first saw the venue’s capabilities at the April 2023 meetings in Burbank. Rais-Shaghaghi says he doesn’t have an exact number for what the production cost to make, but says “it’s millions,” adding that “if anyone else wanted to create this show without having the creative genius of someone like Matteo and his incredible team and had to outsource it and build everything [from scratch], it would probably be, in my opinion, a $15 million to $20 million dollar show.”
Visuals were developed by Milleri, working in partnership with Anyma’s longtime visual creative director and lead CG artist Alessio De Vecchio and head creative Alexander Wessely, a Swedish artist whose resumé includes work on The Weeknd’s Afterhours Til Dawn Tour, multiple Swedish House Mafia videos and more.
“Matteo creates entire worlds rather than just shows, and that aligned with my own interest in dissolving the lines between the physical and the digital,” Wessely says of creating the Sphere show. “Evan Baker, Matteo’s manager, initially connected us, and once we started talking, it quickly became clear that this was going to be something different.”
Anyma
Courtesy of Anyma
In more ways than one, certainly. Sphere is a technological marvel that offers visual storytelling opportunities no other venue can. As such, it requires that much more from the creators of those visuals.
“The Sphere is a cathedral of technology, and building inside it felt like constructing a new reality from the ground up,” Wessely continues. As the project’s head creative and stage designer, as well as director of selected visual pieces, he says he had to “navigate an entirely new way of working. The 180-degree projection required rethinking everything: how we design space, how we frame motion, how we manipulate perception. It was like re-learning a language while simultaneously writing poetry in it, trying to shape something new while staying in control of the chaos.
“I’ve worked across different scales, whether in theatre or massive commercial stages, but this was something else entirely,” he continues. “The scale, the complexity, the unpredictability, it felt endless. At times, it felt like the project was pushing us as much as we were pushing it. Overwhelming in the best and worst ways. But in the end, that’s what made it so rewarding.”
The intensive production process ultimately produced a show titled Afterlife Presents Anyma: The End of Genesys, which finds Anyma playing his music in tandem with visuals centered around a storyline that Wessely says is about “the relationship between humans and technology, where one ends and the other begins.” Visuals feature two characters, a female robot and human man, who appear in intensely detailed and stunningly intricate settings that span the desert, space, a futuristic city, a forest and more, with interstitial scenes projecting images of things like thousands of blinking eyes and countless human bodies floating across the screen. Meanwhile, artists including FKA Twigs, Grimes and Ellie Goulding make memorable appearances in the imagery. The overall effect is often stunning.
As Anyma, De Vecchio and Wessely worked out the creative, Rais-Shaghaghi’s role was largely, he says, “making sure with the team that we were always going by the guidelines, restrictions and limitations with Sphere… You can’t just go and create it and be like, ‘Alright, here it is.’” Among the many tiny technical details to consider were background images “that the human eye would never catch,” says Rais-Shaghaghi, “but if they put it in the system and the system flagged that they weren’t in [the right] resolution, it becomes a giant conversation.”
With only four other acts — U2, Phish, the Eagles and Dead & Company — headlining Sphere thus far, there was only a small number of teams to reach out to for advice. “As a whole, everyone was being very helpful and open to have conversations,” says Rais-Shaghaghi, who adds that Anyma’s team can now be a resource as well. “This is a brand new, state-of-the-art venue that everyone is learning how to use in real time. I think we were one of the [teams] that’s probably created a lot of guidelines for other people to follow because of everything we experimented with and have done.”
As for Anyma, after the residency wraps in early March, he’ll play major festivals including Ultra in Miami, Tomorrowland in Belgium and Hungary’s Sziget. With his Sphere shows featuring much unreleased music and debuting a track with Ellie Goulding, it seems there’s also more coming from the artist, who Rais-Shaghaghi says is, as the Sphere show suggests, perpetually future-focused.
“The most interesting thing about him is he’s always thinking about the next thing,” Rais-Shaghaghi says of what’s next. “And obviously, this is such a high bar to set.”
A crew of marquee artists will play in support of Anyma during the artist’s final dates at Sphere in Las Vegas in February and March. On Wednesday (Jan. 29), the venue announced that Bosnian German favorite Solomun and American producer Layla Benitez will open on Feb. 27, South Korean phenom Peggy Gou and German mainstay […]
After Sphere opened with fanfare in September of 2023, there was a lot of talk, in the electronic music world at least, about which electronic artist would be the first to play Las Vegas’ new space ship of a venue.
Presumably many would’ve jumped at the chance. Las Vegas is a dance music nexus, with billboards along Interstate 15 into the city bearing the faces of new and longtime resident artists at Marquee, Hakkasan, XS and other nightclubs on the Strip.
But ultimately it was a new face that made the cut, with Sphere announcing in July that Italian-American techno and melodic techno producer Anyma — who hadn’t previously had a residency in the city — would be The One.
With the news, talk shifted as people outside of dance music familiarized themselves with the artist, a sizable name within the genre, but still a relative unknown to the gen pop. Who was he, and what would he do, people asked? Meanwhile, talk inside the dance world was that this show was going to be, in colloquial terms, totally bananas.
Certainly the bar was set mighty high after well-received residencies from Sphere’s previous artists U2, Phish, the Eagles and Dead & Company. But those are bands, and this would be a DJ. Still, interest for Anyma was abundantly and statistically clear: tickets for the eight-night residency sold out the same day they went on sale in July, with Anyma reporting selling 100,000 tickets for these shows and more dates subsequently added, bringing the total number of shows to eight.
Officially and grandly titled Afterlife Presents Anyma: The End of Genesys, the figurative curtain for the show lifted Dec. 27, when the residency began amid one of the busiest times of year in Las Vegas, bringing ravers to Sphere for the very first time.
Two days later, on Dec. 29, attendees sporting ravey attire and the de facto Afterlife uniform of black leather everything and sunglasses inside milled around the venue between sets from openers Cassian b2b Kevin de Vries and Charlotte de Witte. (Anyma’s support acts are different for every night of the residency, with the Dec. 28 opener Amelie Lens becoming the venue’s first ever officially billed female artist.)
Anyma came onstage promptly at 11 p.m., appearing on top of a riser placed on the floor of the venue from which glowing cords emanated. The two other risers on each side of him each contained a cello and the robot arms that played the instrument throughout the show, emphasizing the machine vs. human quality of both the overall Anyma aesthetic and the show we were all about to see.
It was, in fact, bananas. Starting with a robot breaking through a wall of glass in tandem with the music, the performance ultimately turned several standard dance music conventions on their head. Many large-scale shows, for example, take place in seated venues like Madison Square Garden, Kia Forum and Red Rocks, but Sphere is arguably the only one where attendees in the seated areas (Sphere also has standing room on the floor) have a vested interest in staying butt-to-chair, given that the seats are programmed to shake and rumble with the bass. (Or in the case of live acts, the drums.)
Certainly many people were on their feet raving in place, but by and large this was a sit down show, making the experience at times feel more akin to a futuristic movie theater than a nightclub or any standard large-scale dance performance.
In ways, Anyma and the Dec. 29 special guest artists — Delilah Montagu and Ellie Goulding — were secondary to the visuals. You might not have even noticed they were there in person, given the focus demanded by the screen and everything happening on it. Born Matteo Milleri, Anyma has long been been half of the duo Tale of Us, with the pair cultivating a signature visual aesthetic via their own output and releases on their influential label Afterlife and its affiliated shows.
This sort of transhumanist aesthetic and human meets machine ideology is so well-suited for Sphere that one can’t help but assume it’s a not insignifcant part of the reason Anyma secured these shows. Any act playing the venue needs to have a well-established and world-building visual identity (which is part of the reason Sphere functions so well for legacy acts like the Dead, who have a huge visual history to pull from.) But Sphere’s mind-bending technical capabilities are providing Anyma and his team the opportunity to both show off and expand their epic, trippy, frequently dark and often beautiful cyborg narrative.
And expand they did. These are five of the best parts of the performance.
The Visuals, Obviously
Image Credit: Courtesy of Anyma
Between the DOJ’s Live Nation antitrust suit, Sphere’s first year, new leadership at CAA and a slew of acquisitions, it’s been another big year for the concert business.