So what is it actually like in the Sphere?
Did Dana White overdo it? Did he hype up both his own event and/or the capabilities of the new technology too much?
As someone in the building two days in a row, both for the Noche UFC event and for a daytime showing of ‘V-U2 An Immersive Concert Film at Sphere’, I feel like I have some insight.
Firstly, while the visual graphics you might see on social media are no doubt impressive, the one major thing that I feel can’t be translated from actual attendance is the scale. The Sphere is huge. If one sits on the floor, it’s almost hard to take it all in. No phone or television screen can truly give scope to how vast it seems when you’re actually sitting there.
Then there’s the quality of the image.
For V-U2, the band are not actually in attendance, but so high definition is the vision in front of you, there are moments where you are truly immersed and forget that fact. Even my friend, UFC lightweight Dan Hooker, forgave my slight dilution of fact that were we going to see a gig.
What’s truly remarkable about the Sphere, however, is an interesting feeling that actually, we’re still yet to see the full capabilities of what the building can do. Even the UFC, with its movie split into multiple parts and tapped into the screen in a way the NFL draft did not, still had moments of ‘down-time’.
Whomever comes to property to perform will no doubt see the examples put in front of them. What a challenge to try and utilize it all in a way those before you did not?