Las Vegas made headlines earlier this year due to its massive entertainment venue that features stunning digital art from U2 shows, and other advertisement requests.
This time, a second location will be debuting in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which is in partnership with DCT or the Department of Culture and Tourism.
Sphere Entertainment CEO, James Dolan, has always expressed plans to create a global network of its Sphere venues. According to Art Newspaper, the collaboration with Abu Dhabi's DCT will bring this to life. This sentiment is shared with DCT Chairman, Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, who's also excited about the new attraction and its potential to provide both residents and tourists a unique entertainment experience.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - JUNE 29: Sphere lights up on June 29, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 17,600-seat, 366-foot-tall, 516-foot-wide music and entertainment venue is the largest spherical structure on Earth and features an Exosphere with a 580,000-square-foot display, the largest LED screen in the world. Ethan Miller/Getty Images
The Sphere
Currently, the Sphere in Las Vegas is worth $2.3 billion and is expected to be in the same price range as the upcoming Abu Dhabi entertainment center. At 365 ft. tall, it can accommodate 20,000 people, which is still smaller than most packed stadiums Taylor Swift can sell out.
The venue will also bring in the iconic part of the Las Vegas sphere, which is the interactive and immersive large-scale technology it uses by featuring tens and thousands of LED screens. While it's a problem to create art for such a large venue, Sphere's LED technology absorbs imagery in a different way. Improving visuals would mean using artificial intelligence for more details and quality. This takes months and a large team of editors to complete.
Besides Abu Dhabi, the Sphere Team, together with Madison Square Garden Ent, already had plans to expand to London but denied approval for a new MSG Sphere in East London last year. BBC shared that the team was disappointed with the decision but will focus on other cities that are more open to this technology.
Currently, they're not the only immersive venue in the world. A Japanese group of artists and programmers expanded internationally to Germany recently with their teamLab Borderless entertainment center that was initially in the Tokyo complex. A new one will be opening in Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat district soon.
