The Sphere is Sphere Entertainment Co.’s $2.3 billion, 17,500-seat live entertainment venue being built just east of The Venetian Expo. It’s the largest sphere-shaped building in the world, standing 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide at its widest point.

The venue will open Sept. 29 with a 17-performance run by rock band U2 with its “Achtung Baby” performance and on Oct. 6 will begin regular showings of “Postcard from Earth,” a film developed by Hollywood director Darren Aronofsky.

The project was developed by Madison Square Garden Entertainment Chairman and CEO James Dolan.

Sphere Immersive Sound, considered the world’s most advanced audio system and developed by Holoplot, a Berlin company, and Sphere Studios of Burbank, California, provides the world’s largest, fully integrated concert-grade audio system that is expected to revolutionize immersive audio experiences.

The system consists of 1,600 permanently installed and 300 mobile Holoplot X1 Matrix Array loudspeaker modules and includes a total of 167,000 individually amplified loudspeaker drivers. The system uses Holoplot’s next-generation 3D Audio-Beamforming and Wave Field Synthesis technology to transform how audio is delivered in large-scale venues.

The system delivers controlled, consistent and crystal-clear concert-grade audio for audiences of up to 20,000 people, providing each audience member with a personalized listening experience whether sitting in the first or back row. The entire sound system is completely hidden behind Sphere's 160,000-square-foot interior LED display plane.

Futuristic sound system

The Sphere uses a modular, steerable audio system that puts every guest in the “sweet spot.” Using state-of-the-art beam-forming technology, audio will be directed to specific locations in the bowl at a near-constant volume, immersing the audience in sound without the inconsistent acoustic coverage and blare of today’s performances. It delivers the quality of sound found in headphones without having to wear headphones.

The world’s highest-resolution LED screen will dominate the interior of the Sphere, with a 4-acre interior screen that will surround the stage and audience to create a completely immersive visual environment.

At its highest point, the interior screen, the size of about four football fields, will tower 240 feet above the stage. The steel framework supporting the 160,000-square-foot screen and the 160,000-speaker Holoplot multilayered audio system weighs about 730 tons.

Immersive visual experience

The Sphere will be home to the largest and highest-resolution media display on Earth. The screen will wrap up and around the audience with more than 160,000 square feet of screen — almost 4 acres. And it will have 16,000 x 16,000 resolution — 100 times better than the typical home television.

Sphere provides plenty to see inside and out. The interior has a 4—acre LED screen — the size of four football fields — but the outside, known as the “exosphere,” is a massive programmable screen that can project images visible from miles away and debuted its capabilities July 4, 2023.

Bolting the high-definition screens to the exosphere took nearly a year to complete. Hundreds of 70-by-60-foot parallelogram-shaped panels with LED lighting were attached to the Sphere to produce a 580,000-square-foot spherical canvas. Overall, the exosphere has 1.2 million “hockey pucks” that encase 24 diodes each. Because the screen is programmable, the diodes can produce the illusion of movement or animation.

So far, Sphere has produced dazzling displays of planet Earth, the lunar landscape of the moon, a massive NBA basketball, an eerie eyeball, Americana and fireworks. It also has a “see-through” mode that makes the building appear invisible.

Sphere operators have promised a mix of artistic displays and paid advertising.

Ground was broken on the project in September 2018 with initial site preparations by the general contractor, Los Angeles-based multinational engineering firm AECOM in February 2019.

One of the biggest construction challenges was lifting a 170-ton steel compression ring into place in February 2021.

Crews brought in the 869-ton DEMAG CC-8800 crane, which could extend 580 feet high, to lift heavy steel components into the dome-shaped roof.