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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, 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.
U2 announced the dates for their upcoming residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere at the Venetian venue on Monday morning (April 24). The veteran UK Rock and Roll Hall of Famers will kick off the U2: UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere run on Sept. 29, marking their first live run of gigs in four years.
U2’s Songs of Surrender debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart (dated April 1), selling 42,000 copies in the United States in the week ending March 23, according to Luminate.
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The retrospective covers album – which see U2 reinterpreting its own catalog of songs – also arrives at No. 1 on Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Alternative Albums, Vinyl Albums and Top Current Album Sales. It also bows at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. (On the latter list, U2 becomes only the fourth group to have a new top 10 album in every decade from the 1980s onwards.)
Notably, of the set’s first-week sales, vinyl accounted for 19,500 copies sold. That marks U2’s biggest sales week on vinyl since Luminate began electronically tracking music sales in 1991.
Songs of Surrender’s is available in multiple configurations, including a standard 16-track version, a 20-track deluxe and a 40-track super deluxe (with the latter divided into four 10-track chapters named after each band member: Bono, Adam Clayton, The Edge and Larry Mullen Jr.). Sales were also helped by a dozen vinyl variants of the album, including exclusive editions sold by Amazon, Target and independent music stores.
Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart ranks the top-selling albums of the week based only on traditional album sales. The chart’s history dates back to May 25, 1991, the first week Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from SoundScan, now Luminate. Pure album sales were the sole measurement utilized by the Billboard 200 albums chart through the list dated Dec. 6, 2014, after which that chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. The new April 1, 2023-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on March 28. For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums rank the week’s most popular rock and alternative albums, rock albums and alternative albums, respectively, by equivalent album units. Vinyl Albums tallies the top-selling vinyl albums of the week. Top Current Album Sales lists the week’s best-selling current (not catalog, or older albums) albums by traditional album sales.
Of Songs of Surrender’s 42,000 copies sold, physical sales comprise 33,500 (19,500 on vinyl; 13,500 on CD; and 500 on cassette) and digital downloads comprise 8,500.
TWICE’s Ready To Be: 12th Mini Album falls 1-2 on Top Album Sales in its second week (29,500; down 80%), Taylor Swift’s chart-topping Midnights climbs 5-3 (12,500; up 22%) and Morgan Wallen’s former leader One Thing at a Time dips 3-4 (11,000; down 41%). Miley Cyrus’ Endless Summer Vacation descends 2-5 with nearly 11,000 (down 80%).
TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s chart-topping The Name Chapter: Temptation falls 4-6 (almost 11,000; down 4%). 100 gecs’ 10,000 Gecs debuts at No. 7 with 7,000 – marking the first chart entry for the duo.
NCT 127’s Ay-Yo: The 4th Album Repackage falls 6-8 on Top Album Sales with 6,000 sold (down 35%), Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy vaults 44-9 with nearly 6,000 (up 151%) after the set was reissued on vinyl LP and Stray Kids’ former No. 1 MAXIDENT descends 9-10 with nearly 6,000 sold (down 1%).
In the week ending March 23, there were 1.832 million albums sold in the U.S. (down 6.5% compared to the previous week). Of that sum, physical albums (CDs, vinyl LPs, cassettes, etc.) comprised 1.492 million (down 7%) and digital albums comprised 340,000 (down 4.2%).
There were 627,000 CD albums sold in the week ending March 23 (down 14.5% week-over-week) and 855,000 vinyl albums sold (down 0.9%). Year-to-date CD album sales stand at 7.552 million (up 1.3% compared to the same time frame a year ago) and year-to-date vinyl album sales total 10.532 million (up 25.3%).
Overall year-to-date album sales total 22.442 million (up 7.7% compared to the same year-to-date time frame a year ago). Year-to-date physical album sales stand at 18.197 million (up 14%) and digital album sales total 4.245 million (down 12.8%).
To celebrate the release of their Disney+ documentary Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman, U2‘s Bono and The Edge reflected on their illustrious career with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, premiering Thursday (March 16) and previewed exclusively on Billboard below.
The Edge discussed the release of the band’s 1991 album, Achtung Baby, which incorporated more alternative rock and electronic dance music into their sound. “We started to become caricatures on that basis, like the Joshua Tree period had way overexaggerated this sense of earnestness and responsibility,” the guitarist explained. “We just had to own up and say, ‘Actually… we’re very silly, we’re not those characters.’”
While The Edge noted that the group “absolutely” wanted to help society through their music, the public seemed to have the wrong impression about who they were as people. “We were also not taking ourselves nearly as seriously as people thought we were, and we were able to laugh at ourselves,” he shared. “Achtung Baby was that antidote for us as much as for music fans to that overly sanctimonious, pious and earnest sort of image that had grown up around us. We needed to flesh out the truth about who we were and give ourselves the freedom then to be in both. Because that was the thing we loved about Bob Marley. He was able to, without any issues, blend the spiritual into the political and sexual. To him, these weren’t different baskets. These were all part of who he was.”
Directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, the A Sort of Homecoming documentary will debut Friday (March 17) on Disney+ and showcase Bono and The Edge‘s special concert performance in Dublin.
Check out The Edge’s thoughts below — plus another exclusive clip of Bono talking about considering himself a songwriter first and foremost — and catch the full interview at 1 p.m. ET. on Apple Music 1 at apple.co/_Zane.
U2‘s Bono and The Edge took David Letterman on a musical and personal journey around their hometown of Dublin, Ireland, for the upcoming Disney+ documentary Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman.
The film, advertised as “part concert movie, part travel adventure plus a whole lot of Bono and The Edge, with Dave’s humor throughout,” does exactly that, as Letterman navigates the origins and cultural impact of U2.
Directed by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville, the documentary will debut March 17 on Disney+ and showcase Bono and The Edge‘s special concert performance in Dublin.
Billboard checked out the heartwarming documentary, and we’ve compiled some of the best, most impactful moments from Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman. See them below, and be sure to sign up for Disney+ here before the film’s release.
The Original Band Name & Where the Nicknames Came From
Before U2, there was Lypton Village, and The Edge admitted that he “can’t remember” why he and his group of friends named themselves that. One of the main characteristics of the band, however, was that every member was given a nickname, which is where The Edge (real name David Howell Evans) was given his alter ego.
“Bono’s Village name was Bono Vox of O’Connell Street,” The Edge said of his bandmate (born Paul David Hewson), before Letterman noted that Bono was nicknamed after a hearing aid store.
“It was part of a pushback against the conservative society that we were a part of,” The Edge explained, before joking that U2 members Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. weren’t given the best nicknames, and that’s why they ultimately decided to move forward with their real names. Clayton was “Mrs. Burns” and Mullen was “The Jam Jar.”
“My nickname is ‘Dumba–,’” Letterman joked.
“Sunday Bloody Sunday”
A lesser known fact among younger U2 fans is just how much the religious turmoil of Ireland inspired the band. Bono and The Edge delved into the history of tension between the Catholics and Protestants in their home country and how it inspired their War hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” written by The Edge.
“On one particular day, this rage poured out. This frustration at not being able to write, not knowing if I should be in a rock n’ roll band, what the future might hold,” The Edge said of his 21-year-old self, who felt as though he had to chose between his faith and his love for music.
“This was alchemy,” Bono said of the song’s creation. “I was watching it. I was standing beside it. I saw this transformation of internal rage to external. I was like, ‘Phew, that’s why I’m in a band. That’s why I’m with this dude.’ It was a way to feel our music could mean something outside of just itself.”
Super Bowl XXXVI Halftime Show
At one point in the documentary, Bono touched on his decision to honor the names of those who died in the 2001 9/11 attacks during U2’s Super Bowl Halftime show performance, which came just six months after the devastating tragedy.
“I recall grappling with the concept of America, and what it meant to me and what it might mean around the world, and that this is a fragile moment,” he shared. “I wanted to use some exhortation, taking away normal spectacle and turning it into a monument of rolling names. Super Bowl Halftimes are a spectacle, but the greatest spectacles are emotions.”
Watch the moving tribute during the “Where the Streets Have No Name” performance here.
Panti Bliss Talks U2 & Homosexuality in Ireland
As the future of drag in the United States is currently in danger, thanks to the recent wave of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation introduced by Republican lawmakers in the U.S., it felt important to see how strongly U2 supports the rights of people of all sexualities — particularly drag queens.
Letterman sat down with drag star and marriage equality advocate Panti Bliss — who once joined U2 onstage in Dublin back in 2015 — to discuss how she initially had misconceptions about the band. “I grew up in a country that would absolutely repress any hint of sexuality. Dublin, all through the ‘80s, was this gray, aggressively normal kind of place. Homosexuality wasn’t even heard of,” she explained.
“I unfairly maligned U2 because, to me, at that time, they were part and parcel of this culture, this sort of straight-boy rock culture that I felt absolutely rejected by,” Panti continued. “So I left, I went to Japan to live and work and do [drag]. While I was living there, U2 came to perform and I started to see, ‘Oh actually, this U2 is not the U2 that I unfairly maligned.’ What I saw onstage in Tokyo was outward-looking, you know? It was sexy and fun. Maybe I’m overselling it, but they were part of the reason then in the end that I ended up coming back eventually.”
On how U2 impacted the movement of equality in Ireland, Panti noted, ” U2 was part of what allowed Ireland to stand on its own two feet and have our own thing. I appreciated that at the time and I still do now.”
A Sweet Moment of Friendship
It’s rare to see a band maintain a close friendship after 50 years of working together, but Bono and The Edge took a moment during their concert performance at Dublin’s Ambassador Theatre to shower each other with love.
“The thing I don’t like about Edge is that he doesn’t need me. He could be doing all of this, writing, singing, performing, playing, producing on his own. But he doesn’t,” Bono shared, looking at his old pal.
“Because it’s not as much fun,” The Edge sweetly replied.
Tearing up, Bono added, “Your best friends are the ones that you can have the best arguments with. I’ve got pretty much the best argument you could ever find right here. I would trust the Edge with my life. In fact, I have trusted him with my life.”
David Letterman’s Personal U2 Song
The late night talk show icon was taken aback at perhaps one of the most heartwarming parts of the documentary, when he found out that The Edge and Bono had spent the morning writing a song about him, inspired by Letterman’s trip to Ireland’s Forty Foot.
“We come to love this Forty Foot man / He keeps on doing the best that he can / We almost lost him there on Sandymount Strand / Being swept away was part of his plan / You can laugh nervously / That’s how we see underneath,” the duo sing, before Letterman puts his hands on his head in disbelief.
“Many nice things have happened to me for my life. This would be right at the top of that list,” he shared.
U2 are taking over Las Vegas, and what better way to announce their grand return to the stage than with a Super Bowl commercial aired to millions of viewers?
In the ad aired during the big game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday (Feb. 12), the band revealed that they will help launch the MSG Sphere, a long-awaited venue at The Venetian casino and resort, in the fall. The announcement also came with the launch of the corresponding website U2 x SPHERE, where fans can register to receive all the details.
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Last month, U2 announced they’ll be releasing a compilation album titled Songs of Surender on March 17, and the project will contain 40 reworked versions of tracks from throughout their 40-plus-year career. The collection, a companion to singer Bono’s recent memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, will feature updated takes on classic hits like “One,” “Bad,” “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “Desire,” “With or Without You” and “I Will Follow,” among others. Guitarist The Edge curated and produced the collection of re-recorded and reimagined songs from across U2’s catalog, which were laid down in sessions over the past two years.
U2’s most recent album was 2017’s Songs of Experience. Watch the announcement in the Super Bowl commercial below.
The MSG Sphere — a partnership between the Madison Square Garden Company and Las Vegas Sands Corporation — was initially set to open in 2021, but construction was suspended in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Watch the extended ad below:
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