Smaller Spheres? That’s how the franchise could expand globally

Future versions of the Sphere will be considerably smaller than the one in Las Vegas when the franchise is expanded globally, the company’s top executive said Monday.

James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Sphere Entertainment Co., told investors in the company’s second-quarter earnings call that while future Sphere venues would still have all of the technology and content of the Las Vegas Sphere, new ones would have seating capacities around 5,000 instead of the 17,000 Las Vegas has.

“As far as expansion goes, beyond Abu Dhabi, we’re currently working on the architecture for a smaller sphere, which we think will be deployable to more markets,” Dolan said in response to an inquiry about expansion.

“Somewhere in the 5,000-seat range,” he said. “But 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. So I anticipate by year end we’ll have more to say about that. But right now, we’re in the planning and design phase.”

In October, the New York-based company announced that the world’s second Sphere would be built in a partnership with the Department of Culture and Tourism-Abu Dhabi, known as DCT Abu Dhabi. No construction timeline or opening date has been announced.

A plan to build a Sphere in London was aborted last year, and there have been reports about Sphere negotiations being conducted with groups in South Korea.

Dolan has long said a network of Spheres that would take advantage of what developers learned when building in Las Vegas would make the company more profitable in the future.

Dolan said Monday that although he expects the content and scheduling in the Abu Dhabi Sphere would vary from Las Vegas, he expects many of the film presentations the company has planned would be a part of the Abu Dhabi library of content.

Mix of presentations

The Las Vegas Sphere currently provides a mix of live concert residencies, the Darren Aronofsky film “Postcard from Earth,” the immersive concert film “V-U2” that shows musical performances from U2’s Sphere residency, and several corporate presentations, including the Delta Air Lines keynote address at CES.

The company also generates revenue from advertising on the venue’s exosphere.

During the quarter that ended Dec. 31, “Postcard from Earth” passed its 1,000th performance, the electronic music act “Afterlife presents Anyma ‘The End of Genesys’” debuted, and the Eagles’ 32-show residency continued. New residencies by Dead & Company, Kenny Chesney and the Backstreet Boys were announced.

Dolan said Monday that another musical residency film is being produced, but he didn’t say which artists are involved. Executives have said because of the high sound quality of the Sphere and the use of the Big Sky camera system that attending a film presentation in the Sphere is nearly like having the artist in the venue.

For the quarter, the company continues to lose money with operations of MSG Network a part of the corporate structure. But the venue itself had improved results over the previous year but still operated at a loss.

Overall, the company reported an operating loss of $142.9 million, a $16.7 million improvement from the prior year quarter. Revenue was $308.3 million, a 1.9 percent decline from last year.

The company also announced that it is transitioning to quarterly reports for the calendar year, so the new fiscal year will run from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31.

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.