Sphere
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Former Google executive Jennifer Koester joins Sphere Entertainment as president, Sphere Business Operations, with effect from Feb. 5.
In this new position, Koester leads the strategy and execution of all business aspects of Sphere, the $2 billion next-generation entertainment space that opened last September in Las Vegas, with U2’s UV’s Achtung Baby Live At Sphere residency.
Announced today (Jan. 22), Koester will work closely with executive leadership to grow the Sphere businesses, including maximizing the calendar and ticket sales; driving strategic partnerships with artists, managers, promoters and others in the live entertainment space; and developing a corporate conference business for product launches and other events.
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Based in New York, Koester reports to James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO, Sphere Entertainment.
“We have seen a strong worldwide reaction to Sphere from customers, brands and artists since our September opening,” comments Dolan in a statement, “and we look forward to leveraging Jennifer’s extensive background driving growth at premier technology and entertainment brands as we continue to build our Sphere business.”
Koester joins the company having racked-up 25 years’ executive-level experience across sales, marketing, technology, digital business, legal counsel and more, most recently serving as managing director, Americas strategic alliances, global partnerships at Google Commercial Operations. Before that, she was director, telecommunications and video distributors, global partnerships at Google.
“Throughout my career, I have focused on pioneering and delivering growth strategies that bridge business needs and leverage new technologies,” she comments, “and I am excited to bring that experience to Sphere.”
The state-of-the-art venue on the Vegas Strip is massive — standing 366 feet tall by 516 feet wide, big enough to house the Statue of Liberty. But it’s the detail that matters.
Its 20,000 capacity main room is dominated by a 160,000-square-foot LED screen that curves and towers to an apex of 240 feet above. Footage from U2’s first run in the room went viral, and the shows were box-office gold.
According to Billboard Boxscore, U2‘s 17-show run beginning in September at Sphere generated nearly $110 million in ticket sales, with an SEC filing noting that those dates generated a total of $30.7 million in revenue for Sphere Entertainment through Nov. 30.
Next up, Sphere Entertainment’s own content offering, Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth, generated approximately $44.5 million in total revenue from ticket sales from 111 showings.
Read more here.
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 Entertainment Co. has promoted Ed Lunger to senior vp/GM of Sphere, the groundbreaking venue that opened in Las Vegas last September.
After previously serving as Sphere’s vp/assistant BM of back of house operations, Lunger will now oversee building operations, event production, technical operations, guest services, food and beverage, merchandise operations and ticket operations. He will also work across the Sphere organization to develop, execute and support strategic plans aligned with the venue’s overall business objectives.
“Being part of the Sphere team opening this next-generation venue has been an honor, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to now lead our venue operations team in this new role,” Lunger said in a statement. “Sphere is setting a new standard for the in-venue guest experience, and I look forward to working with my colleagues across the organization as we continue to deliver unforgettable moments for our guests right here in Las Vegas.”
“I am pleased that Ed has taken on a new leadership role with Sphere,” added Rich Claffey, Sphere’s executive vp/COO. “Since its opening, Sphere has been delivering a first-of-its-kind experience to guests. With his deep expertise in venue management and operations, including at other venues in the MSG Family of Companies, Ed will ensure that Sphere is well positioned to continue building on our world-class experience.”
Lunger is based in Las Vegas and has been on Sphere’s venue leadership team since 2020. He previously spent seven years on the venue operation team at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., and also worked in various venue operations and engineering roles at Madison Square Garden.
Sphere opened to much fanfare in September with a residency from U2. In December, Billboard Boxscore reported that the band’s 17-show run at Sphere generated nearly $110 million in ticket sales; a Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Dec. 5 notes that those shows generated a total of $30.7 million in revenue for Sphere Entertainment through Nov. 30. Meanwhile, Sphere Entertainment’s own content offering, Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth, generated approximately $44.5 million in total revenue from ticket sales from 111 showings.
U2‘s residency has been extended multiple times, with the final shows slated for May. Phish will play its own four-show Sphere residency this April.
Sphere Entertainment provided the first inside glimpse at the finances of James Dolan‘s $2 billion Sphere project in Las Vegas in a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday (Dec. 5).
Spun off from Madison Square Garden Entertainment in April and now trading on the NYSE as SPHR, the company is expected to report positive adjusted income this quarter thanks to the opening of the venue and a successful run of shows including U2:UV’s Achtung Baby Live At Sphere.
According to Billboard Boxscore, U2‘s 17-show run beginning in September at Sphere generated nearly $110 million in ticket sales. The SEC filing notes that those shows generated a total of $30.7 million in revenue for Sphere Entertainment through Nov. 30. Meanwhile, Sphere Entertainment’s own content offering, Darren Aronofsky’s Postcard from Earth, has generated approximately $44.5 million in total revenue from ticket sales from 111 showings.
U2 played its first show at Sphere on Sept. 29, 2023, kicking off a multi-month run at the venue. Due to the strong demand, 15 more shows have been added in January, February and March 2024, bringing the band’s planned number of performances to 40.
Also in the SEC filing, the company announced plans to raise money through the sale of $225 million in convertible senior notes that are due to mature in 2028, as well as the option for purchasers to buy an additional $33.75 million in notes.
Sphere Entertainment plans to use a portion of the proceeds from the notes sale to fund capped call transactions designed to reduce the potential dilution of its common stock from the conversion of debt into equity. The remainder of the net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including capital for Sphere-related growth initiatives, according to a release announcing the offering. The initial conversion rate, interest rate and certain other terms of the notes will be negotiated between Sphere Entertainment and the initial purchasers.
Sphere Entertainment began the quarter (starting Sept. 30) with $433.5 million in cash on hand, with $123 million coming from advance ticket sales. The principal balance of the company’s total debt at the beginning of the quarter was approximately $1.2 billion, including $932.3 million of debt under the MSGN Credit Facilities. Under the terms of the MSGN deal, $103.1 million in required quarterly amortization payments are due between Sept. 30, 2023, and Oct. 11, 2024.
Shares of Sphere Entertainment dropped nearly 20% in trading after the company announced the debt offering, but bounced back slightly and were down 15.5% to $28.41 at the market’s close.
Phish are the next major act booked to play Las Vegas’ eye-popping Sphere venue. The band announced on Thursday (Nov. 30) that they will do a four-show run at the building from April 18-21, 2024, with each night set to feature a unique setlist and visuals. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See […]
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has rejected Madison Square Garden’s long-standing proposal to build a Sphere arena in London, less than two months after the company debuted its first Sphere project to critical acclaim in Las Vegas.
News of the rejection came by way of a letter from Khan to Anthony Hollingsworth, director of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which oversees London’s Olympic Park properties. On Nov. 6, Hollingsworth had written to Khan to inform him that “the local planning authority is minded to grant planning permission” for the Sphere project. In the letter dated Monday (Nov. 20), Khan explained to Hollingworth that after considering a 111-page report commissioned by the Greater London Authority (GLA) advising the mayor to reject the plan, he was now ordering the LLDC to “refuse planning permission” for the venue.
A statement from Madison Square Garden Entertainment officials said they were “disappointed in London’s decision” but added, “There are many forward-thinking cities that are eager to bring this technology to their communities. We will concentrate on those.”
A proposal for the venue was submitted in 2018, and Sphere London initially survived key votes by the city’s local planning authority. But with his letter, Khan has seemingly doomed the project.
The mayor said his main reason for rejecting the proposal was the impact he believed the venue would have on the surrounding area, writing that Sphere would “cause significant light intrusion resulting in significant harm to the outlook of neighbouring properties.”
He also said the size of the venue — 300 feet high and 400 feet wide — “would result in a bulky, unduly dominant” facility” that failed “to respect the character and appearance of this part of the town centre and the site’s wider setting.” Lastly, he criticized the venue’s high “energy intensive use,” which he says “does not achieve a high sustainability standard, and does not constitute good and sustainable design.”
“GLA officers have concluded that to grant permission would be contrary to the Development Plan,” adds Khan in the letter, citing a document that lays out the spatial development strategy in London for the next 20 to 25 years. “[It] would prejudice the implementation of the policies within the Development Plan relating to residential amenity, good design, and the conservation and enhancement of London’s heritage.”
The Sphere project had previously faced pushback from some local residents as well as AEG, which operates London’s O2 Arena, located just four miles from the proposed site of the venue. In January, after the London Legacy Development Corporation’s Planning Decisions Committee greenlit MSG Entertainment to initiate work on the project, AEG called on Khan to reject the project in a statement that read in part: “The advertising façade is at a wholly unprecedented scale for London and totally out of keeping with the surrounding area. The design was conceived for the heart of Las Vegas and has been transposed onto this east London site: it’s the wrong design, in the wrong location.”
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.
Sphere Entertainment Co. shares rose 11.1% to $41.99 on Monday (Oct. 2) — and reached a high of $43.59, up 17.3% from Friday’s closing price — after the world got its first glimpses of the revolutionary concert venue over the weekend. The $2.3 billion venue opened on Friday (Sept. 29) with the first of 25 […]
Music is only part of the audio-visual experience in U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, the 25-date U2 residency that opened Sphere in Las Vegas on Sept. 29 and will run through December. For the show, creative directors Willie Williams and Es Devlin helped the band harness Sphere’s technological potential with immersive visuals, including pieces commissioned specifically for U2:UV and the innovative venue’s 160,000-square-foot LED screen.
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Among the creatives to work with the band was visual artist and filmmaker Marco Brambilla, whose eye-popping video collage “King Size” serves as the backdrop for “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” Achtung Baby‘s second track. For three decades, Brambilla, who began his career as a director, including of the 1993 sci-fi film Demolition Man, has created visual art pieces that grapple with subjects including media oversaturation, technology’s effects, and the nature of pop culture. In 2008, Brambilla began harvesting short loops of source material – clips of characters, landscapes, and backgrounds that were each one second or less – to make high-concept video collages that tackle “epic human themes, but interpreted in a way that’s very much about sensory overload in today’s media landscape,” he explains. After seeing one of his recent collages, “Heaven’s Gate,” at London’s immersive space Outernet Arts in early 2023, Williams reached out to Brambilla about becoming involved in U2:UV.
Brambilla’s no stranger to large-scale art installations – for one, Outernet bills itself as having “the world’s largest wrap-around screens” – but even so, Sphere’s unprecedented canvas offered new challenges and rewards. For Brambilla, whose rare musical collaborations include two operas with Marina Abramović and Kanye West’s 2010 “Power” music video, it also presented the opportunity to work with one of rock’s most visually daring artists – and on his favorite song off his favorite U2 album, no less.
“It’s fantastic, because Sphere is giving performers an opportunity to go into a space and be able to have visuals that you could never tour, without this technology and without the permanent installation of the LED screens,” Brambilla tells Billboard hours before leaving Paris for Sphere’s opening. “There’s all sorts of possibilities – and I think they’ve only scratched the surface.”
RICH FURY
How did you get connected with U2 and Sphere?
Willie went to see the [“Heaven’s Gate”] show and I got a call, and he asked if I would be interested in a commission for the residency that was coming up at Sphere. I had obviously heard about Sphere before and I became very interested very quickly, because the scale of the space and the technology was always really fascinating for me. From there, the only brief from them was really, “We want something really maximal, like, sensory overload.”
Then the concept of Elvis came up. The idea of the birth of Las Vegas and the death of Elvis became interconnected in my mind. I’d started watching a lot of Elvis films and doing a lot of research on his rise and fall. It seemed very prescient – it seemed like a really interesting commentary on what’s going on today. I put together the concept in a very short amount of time, it only took about a week. Then I started making the work.
Usually when I make a video collage I have scheduled anywhere between six months and a year. And in this case, I only had maybe three, three and a half months to make it. So it required a lot of new technology. I used a lot of AI to assist in making it and also to make versions of Elvis that would populate the canvas in AI.
How would you describe “King Size”?
It’s an upward scroll — the piece scrolls upwards from the desert. It starts in a very stylized, very theatrical version of the desert and Las Vegas, and then neon rises from the desert. Then, eventually, it becomes like a futuristic, hyper-version of Vegas, like a mega Vegas. At the same time, the characters are associated with every era of Las Vegas. So you have Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin in the kind of glamour years, and then it becomes more about performers and strippers and dance clubs as you go up.
And there’s also samples from many of Elvis’s characters he played in films, as well as samples from documentaries that we found that we were able to create gifs from. And so that became the population of it. But the architecture of it is really the birth of Las Vegas.
Did you come up with the concept with U2 and Willie?
It was actually in conjunction with Bono, because we were talking about how to express this idea of a myth – you know, like what happens to celebrities. Elvis was the first mega-celebrity, in a way. Bono said, “Oh, this could be about the death of Elvis, the death of Elvis is an interesting theme.” That was a departure point that became very clear, this idea of the parallel of excess and consumerism and the American dream and what’s happened to the American dream being personified by what happened to Elvis Presley. The lyrics in [“Even Better Than the Real Thing”] are exactly about that theme that I was exploring visually. It worked really well thematically, not just visually.
STUFISH ENTERTAINMENT ARCHITECTS
U2 has a rich history of creating forward-thinking, immersive concert experiences. What were they like as collaborative partners?
It was probably the best collaboration I’ve ever had. They really respect you as an artist. They commissioned John Gerrard, Es Devlin and Brian Eno to make pieces [for U2:UV], and these pieces are art pieces. They really wanted something that would stand alone as an art installation. The technical aspects of working with the scale of the screen at Sphere, that was incredibly complicated. The actual creative process, in terms of being able to make an artwork, that was incredibly easy and rewarding, because they were just fantastically supportive and really easy to work with.
How did realizing this piece on Sphere’s screen differ from other installations you’ve done?
I’d worked on large-scale, site-specific installations, as well as museum and gallery shows. But in this case, it was unprecedented. Both the scale and the resolution were so much more than anything I’d [previously worked on] – and I’d already worked on some fairly ambitious projects. This was, by a factor of four, more ambitious in terms of the technology involved.
What did that specifically involve for you?
The collage is a hybrid: It contains elements that are entirely generated by AI and elements that are computer-generated, but using AI pre-visualization. That helped tremendously in terms of the [expedited] schedule and being able to create something very dense and very rich. But [Sphere] also has very good tools to help you pre-visualize it. As you’re making the work, there’s a headset simulator that they have where you can pick any seat you want and you can choose to sit in the front row or halfway up or in the corner, and you can look at your work on the Sphere in this headset. I was able to do this remotely. I only saw it in Sphere about two and a half weeks ago.
STUFISH ENTERTAINMENT ARCHITECTS
What were the biggest challenges?
Just rendering files that are that size and to create the kind of sharpness and resolution necessary [for Sphere’s screen], it’s challenging. But it’s gonna get easier and easier. As the technology gets better and you have more computing power, you’ll be able to generate visuals at that resolution with in an easier way. So I think it’s kind of future-proof in terms of being able to create visuals; right now, it’s early days. We’re kind of inventing the technology as we go.
Tell me more about how you used AI to create “King Size.”
I was working on another project, for a show that’s coming up next year, using AI, and I was very happy to be familiar with it [when I started working on “King Size”]. I was able to speed up the process, because over the course of making so many of these [visual collages] over the years, I have a huge library of film clips. I was able to train an AI software called Stable Diffusion with all these clips. Basically, the library went into AI, and then I was able to call up images very quickly. It became a kind of a collaboration with me and the AI working to find images that would fit the storyline.
We started using a program called DALL-E in its beta phase and generated a lot of prototype visuals of Elvis and different versions of Elvis, these kind of fantastical exaggerations of Elvis using that program. The good thing about AI right now is I couldn’t have made this work without it in time I had – it would have been impossible to attempt to make something at this resolution and with this kind of detail.
How long might it have taken without AI assistance?It would have taken at least a year. “Heaven’s Gate” took eight months, and the resolution was 8K; this one is 16K, and it has probably four times the number of samples as “Heaven’s Gate.” With every increase in resolution for what I’m doing […] you have to create a canvas that has much more information in it. The rendering at that resolution becomes very time consuming. I was working with a really great post-production company called The Mill in Paris and we were able to output the files fairly quickly.
Courtesy Marco Brambilla Studio, 2023.
How might artists utilize Sphere’s canvas going forward?
They have a sound system that can localize sound very precisely. The screens are so sharp that you’re not aware of pixels, you’re not aware of any kind of resolution, it just looks like a window into another world. It removes the concept of being somewhere. You’re transported somewhere else. There’s so many things you can do with it, because the technology that’s in that building, that’s permanent technology, allows you to experiment with all sorts of interaction between the performance and the screens themselves.
09/30/2023
Billboard was in the orb for the very first night, and we’ve rounded up the best moments from the concert (and venue) debut.
09/30/2023