LAS VEGAS – U2 has announced plans to be the first to perform in what guitarist the Edge has called “an amazing playpen,” the MSG Sphere. Their planned residency, Achtung Baby Live at Sphere Las Vegas, is set to launch with five shows in late September and early October. Tickets priced at $140 and up will go on sale April 28.
The 17,600-capacity venue, built over five years for a reported $2 billion, has been engineered with immersive AV technologies to optimize the audience’s entertainment experience. The idea is to provide audiences with visuals and a listening experience that can’t be duplicated by venues designed primarily for live sporting events, then repurposed for concerts.
MSG Entertainment, the company behind Madison Square Garden in NYC, has also announced that the venue will offer “Sphere Experiences” that will provide audiences with AV spectacles specifically designed for the venue. The first of these, Postcard from Earth, makes its debut in early October. Prices on the website, thespherevegas.com, ranged from $49 to $199 per seat.
“We are redefining the future of entertainment through Sphere,” said James L. Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of MSG Entertainment, just before Postcard from Earth tickets went on sale in April. “Sphere provides a new medium for directors, artists, and brands to create experiences that cannot be seen or told anywhere else, and Sphere Experiences are just one of the ways we will use the venue’s technologies to engage the senses and transport audiences to places both real and imagined. Postcard from Earth will set a new bar for multi-sensory storytelling possibilities, and we look forward to having audiences experience it at Sphere this fall.”
Along with ultra-high res (16K x 16K) visuals on a giant immersive screen, the Sphere promises a sound system that will make use of precise beam-forming technologies and a reported 164,000 speakers. More than half of the seats – 10,000 of them – will let guests feel the low-end rumble of thunder or motorcycles with vibrations via an infrasound haptic system. Each Sphere Experience will be approximately 60 minutes in length, and productions are slated to run multiple times per day, year-round.
For more information, visit www.thespherevegas.com
