Watse

The U2 x Las Vegas Sphere show took two years to create and will make ~$270m. In Fall 2021, the band was approached to open the $2.3B mega-structure (with a capacity of 18k). Willie Williams — U2’s creative director since the early 1980s — initially thought it was a “terrible idea”. Why? U2’s iconic tours have been breakthrough custom sets from Zoo TV in the early 1990s (pioneering giant screens on stage) to the 360 Tour of late 2000s (360-degree stage for stadium shows). They weren’t keen to build an act around the Sphere’s requirements, especially one with the most ambitious audio-visual specs ever:  ▫️160k+ speakers ▫️366ft tall x 516ft wide (9 floors) ▫️Largest LED screen ever (160k sq ft) However, the idea of a residency — instead of a moving tour — appealed to U2 because of COVID travel uncertainty. One major obstacle was that dome-shaped buildings are typically awful for audio, per Variety. The Sphere solved the issue with its 167k speakers including one in each seat. Effectively, every person is “getting studio-quality sound” according to James Dolan (owner of NY Knicks, NY Rangers, MSG and the man behind the Sphere).  Meanwhile, the visuals were a collaboration with the world’s top creatives (Es Devlin, Marco Brambilla, John Gerrard and long-time producer Brian Eno). The amount of data created to fill the LED screen is mind-boggling, per Wallpaper: ▫️ there are 268,435,456 pixels… ▫️ …which is equal to 72 HD TVs ▫️ … which is equal to 12k screen resolution  ▫️ …which means “every minute of content produced for Sphere is the equivalent of one hour of streaming television” “With all the big stuff I’ve done for U2 and anyone else, we don’t start with the equipment, we start with the idea, and then figure out what we need to realize that idea,” Williams tells Variety. “And sometimes it involves big video, sometimes it doesn’t. Whereas here, the only given we had going in was the building — and a building that didn’t exist, and in fact isn’t finished now. So it was odd starting a show with hardware and with a space rather than the other way around.” Here’s some napkin math for “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere”: ▫️25 dates x 18,000 per show x $600 per ticket (range is $400 to $1400) = $270 million The entire U2 team — Williams, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Bram van den Berg (who is subbing in for the injured Larry Mullen Jr) — clearly made a risky bet. But the viral clips and buzz from opening night show it has paid off big time.