The Future of Entertainment

MSG Sphere, a wildly ambitious tech-first venue, is rising over the Las Vegas desert

what does it take to create the world’s most audaciously advanced concert venue? The answer, according to billionaire James Dolan, whose Madison Square Garden Co. broke ground on Las Vegas’ MSG Sphere in September, is 157,000 ultra-directional speakers, a three-and-a-half-acre spherical ultra-high-res video screen, and vibrating floors, all wedged into an enormous dome built from scratch. His modest goal, as MSG Ventures CEO David Dibble tells it: to “reinvent the live-entertainment business” with a “technology-driven” facility. Touring acts can certainly play the MSG Sphere, but the venue seems geared for residencies and special projects that could fully exploit its capabilities. There’s that LED screen, which arcs over the audience “like a planetarium times 10,” Dibble says. The speakers, which will be hidden in the walls, are from a German startup, Holoplot, that specializes in targeting narrow sound beams, so each section gets its own sound (per MSG, audio in different languages could even be beamed to different sections). The “haptic flooring system,” meanwhile, is all about the bass. Explains Dibble, “The lowest bass response, instead of being transmitted through the air, is transmitted through the floor, directly into your feet or the chair in which you sit.” With another Sphere planned for London, MSG’s hopes are high. “Three years from now,” Dolan promised at the groundbreaking, “you’ll say, ‘I had no idea this was what it was going to be.’ It is that crazy and that incredible a project.”

BRIAN HIATT