K-ENTERTECH HUB | ANALYSIS
Luminate finds residency acts gain streams (U2 up 46%, Anyma up 154%); the Sphere pairs a $238 average ticket with a $450 million first year for The Wizard of Oz. In Korea, K-pop VR concerts have sold 230,000 tickets in 28 cities and Seoul Arena opens next year, but no K-pop act has played the Sphere
Playing the Sphere is good for streaming. Artists who took up residencies at the Las Vegas venue saw their music consumption rise during and after their runs, according to data published on September 22 by Luminate, the entertainment data company.
U2's U.S. on-demand audio streams reached 11.9 million in the first week of its residency, up 46% on the same week a year earlier. Streams for techno and house DJ Anyma rose 154% when the 12 weeks after his first show were compared with the 12 weeks before.
Luminate attributes the gains to the shows because the artists were neither touring nor releasing albums at the time, and their existing catalogues grew too. What the Sphere gives artists, in other words, extends beyond the ticket settlement into streaming after the run. Not every act benefited: Kenny Chesney, Zac Brown Band and the Eagles saw no meaningful lift.
What artists give the venue is demand at premium prices.
Billboard put the Sphere's average ticket at $238, roughly double Madison Square Garden's, and credited it with $420.5 million in 2024 gross, the most for any venue in Boxscore history; it led again in the 2026 midyear tally. The venue's other earner is film made with IP owners and technology partners.
The Wizard of Oz at Sphere, Warner Bros. Discovery's 1939 classic rebuilt with Google's generative AI, opened on August 28, 2025 and had taken $450 million in ticket sales from 3.6 million guests by August 6. Sphere Entertainment's Sphere segment grew revenue 48% to $492.3 million in the first half of 2026; in the second quarter The Sphere Experience added $53.8 million, more than the segment's whole $50.8 million increase.
The cost of a $2.3 billion building is now being shared too. With more than $80 million of depreciation a quarter, the segment still lost $69.6 million at the operating level in the second quarter. The next Sphere, in Abu Dhabi, is funded by the emirate, with Sphere Entertainment collecting content-licensing and technology fees.
James Dolan, executive chairman and chief executive, says another location will be named by early 2027. No K-pop act has yet played the Sphere. BLACKPINK (블랙핑크) member LISA opens K-pop's first Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace in November, and the city of Hanam (하남시) closes bids on September 30 for K-Star World (K-스타월드), built around a K-pop arena of at least 20,000 seats.
U2: 11.9 million streams in week one, up 46%
According to the analysis by Grant Gregory, a Luminate research manager, U2's U.S. on-demand audio streams rose 46% year on year in the first week and kept growing by double digits through the run. U2 was not touring, though it released "Atomic City" in September 2023 to mark the residency, a factor Luminate flags. A residency, it argues, let a band that had slowed its live schedule stage premium shows without the wear of the road.
Anyma: up 154%, with his older catalogue roughly doubling
Anyma had by far the smallest streaming footprint of any Sphere headliner but was booked for his production and visuals; Variety reported the run in 2024 as the venue's first electronic residency. He sold out all 12 shows between late December 2024 and early March 2025, grossing $31.5 million from 203,977 tickets, according to Pollstar. Footage spread on social media and streams followed.
On Luminate's chart, Anyma's weekly U.S. streams sat at 600,000 to 700,000 in late 2024, jumped to around 3 million as the Sphere dates began and stayed above 1.5 million throughout the run. "Hypnotized", featuring Ellie Goulding and released on January 9, 2025, accounts for part of that, but even excluding it his existing catalogue rose from 600,000-700,000 a week to 1.1-1.8 million during the residency. By October 2025 total weekly streams were still above 1.2 million. Luminate puts the 12-week before-and-after increase at 154%.
The Backstreet Boys gained on the announcement; Chesney and the Eagles did not gain at all
The acts that gained were mostly legacy artists with deep catalogues and a reputation for spectacle: Phish, Dead & Company, the reunited No Doubt and the Backstreet Boys. For the Backstreet Boys, the announcement alone lifted streams substantially, though Luminate did not publish the figure. The group opened a 35-show run in summer 2025 as the venue's first pop act and has extended it to 56 nights.
Chesney grossed $52.6 million from 15 shows in May and June 2025 (Billboard); the Eagles took $93.4 million from 20 shows from December 2024 (Pollstar). Both out-earned Anyma, yet neither saw a streaming lift; nor did Zac Brown Band. Luminate suggests their fans are less active online, so footage travels less, and that country shows rely less on visuals. Ticket revenue is split between venue, promoter and artist, while streaming income goes to labels and publishers, and in Luminate's data the two did not move together.
A $238 average ticket makes it the top-grossing venue
U2's 40-show opening residency grossed $244.5 million from 663,000 tickets at an average of $368, the fourth-highest residency in Boxscore history. Phish, Dead & Company, the Eagles, Anyma, Kenny Chesney and the Backstreet Boys followed. Metallica begins a 24-show run in October.
Billboard's 2025 midyear report put the Sphere's average ticket at $238, roughly double Madison Square Garden's $133 and London's O2 Arena at $105. With only 42 dates in the half, it was the world's top-grossing venue. In the 2026 midyear report it led again, within 3% of Mexico City's Estadio GNP Seguros ($182.6 million) and New York's Radio City Music Hall ($180 million).
A 16K screen, 167,000 speakers and 17,600 seats for $2.3 billion
The Sphere opened with U2 on September 29, 2023. The building stands 366 feet tall and 516 feet wide and seats more than 17,600. Its wraparound interior screen, built from 64,000 LED tiles by Montreal's SACO Technologies, has 16K-by-16K resolution across 160,000 square feet. Berlin-based Holoplot's beamforming system drives 167,000 speakers, and 10,000 seats carry infrasound haptics. The exterior Exosphere is clad in 580,000 square feet of LEDs.
That hardware underpins three revenue lines: the interior screen and sound serve in-house films and concerts, the exterior carries advertising and sponsorship, and companies rent the whole venue for brand events. Billboard Boxscore credited the Sphere with $420.5 million in 2024 gross, the highest annual total for any venue of any size.
First-half segment revenue of $492.3 million, led by The Wizard of Oz
In the second quarter, reported on July 30, Sphere segment revenue rose 29% to $226.4 million. Sphere Experience revenue grew $53.8 million, and sponsorship, Exosphere advertising and suite fees added $10.5 million. Event revenue fell $11.7 million on two fewer brand events; concerts rose by six residency shows but earned less per show because of the mix of acts. In the first quarter, $81.7 million of the segment's $108.4 million increase also came from The Sphere Experience.
The Wizard of Oz at Sphere reworks the 1939 film for the venue. To fill a 160,000-square-foot screen from footage shot in 4:3, the producers used generative AI from Google DeepMind and Google Cloud to extend and sharpen the frame.
Rights holder Warner Bros. Discovery, immersive studio Magnopus and VFX houses including Digital Domain worked on it for more than two years. Wind, fog, scent and haptic seats add to the effect. Tickets start at $104 and it runs several times a day. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on September 8, 2025 that it cost $100 million.
The Wizard of Oz: $450 million and 3.6 million guests in year one, 850-plus shows
Ahead of the first anniversary, Sphere Entertainment said on August 6 that The Wizard of Oz had passed $450 million in ticket sales and 3.6 million guests from all 50 states and more than 140 countries. Fox5 Las Vegas put the number of shows at more than 850. Sales had reached $130 million by October 17, 2025, seven weeks after opening, nearly $200 million by December 1, $260 million (two million tickets) by January 19 and $400 million (three million) by mid-June. The film ran 209 times in the first quarter and 220 in the second. Anniversary activations run in the venue from August 10 to September 30.
The company also counted the effects. In the first year the show dropped more than 675,000 apples on the audience and staged 8,000 butterfly flights, 3,200 winged-monkey flights and 6,500 pounds of blown leaves (TicketNews, August 7). In February Mr Dolan promised an enhanced version with new scenes and 4D effects later this year, and said the extreme-sports film From The Edge could open in the fourth quarter or slip into early 2027 depending on how Oz performs (Deadline).
A second major in-house film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show at Sphere, opens in 2027. Citing Bloomberg, the Chronicle reported that Mr Dolan had approached Warner Bros. about Harry Potter and Disney about Star Wars.
Depreciation still weighs. After $82.3 million of it in the second quarter, the segment posted a $69.6 million operating loss, while adjusted operating income rose 60% to $39.9 million. In the fourth quarter of 2025 the company recorded its first operating profit since the Sphere opened, Sportico reported on February 12. Full-year 2025 segment revenue was $781.4 million.
Alex and Ani, Jill Martin and more: the film IP moves into apparel and accessories
Oz earns beyond the ticket. In November 2025 Sphere launched exclusive Wizard of Oz at Sphere collections with jewellery brand Alex and Ani, By Jill Martin and The Wild Collective, sold in the venue and online, according to Sphere's official X account. The Jill Martin line of sherpa jackets and hoodies was made with Lorna Luft, daughter of the film's star Judy Garland. The Sphere store sells Sphere, Orbi and Oz exclusives from sequin bombers and vintage hoodies to tees and headwear. The company does not break out merchandise revenue.
Here outside brands attach themselves to a film IP the venue created, each selling its own products: Warner Bros.' underlying IP, the Sphere brand and the partners' distribution come together in one item. Extending a live experience into products is the same shape as the concert merchandise business K-pop agencies already run.
Exosphere advertising and CES keynotes: renting the whole venue
Advertising and sponsorship are growing on multi-year deals. Since the second half of 2025 Sphere Entertainment has signed Zoox, Lenovo, Anheuser-Busch and Delta Air Lines, and in April it added Evian. During CES, companies take over the building: Delta held its keynote there in January 2025 and Lenovo in January 2026, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise has returned for its own keynotes. Brand events can swing results, however; two fewer of them cut second-quarter event revenue.
Abu Dhabi by 2029, a smaller format for National Harbor, and a new market by early 2027
In May Sphere Entertainment and the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi chose Yas Island for the second full-size Sphere, due by the end of 2029. The department also holds exclusive rights to build and operate Spheres across the Middle East and North Africa for at least ten years. Under terms announced in October 2024, the department pays a franchise initiation fee and funds construction; once the venue opens, Sphere Entertainment collects annual fees for licensed content such as Sphere Experiences and for its brand, technology and operating services. A 6,000-seat smaller-format Sphere is planned for National Harbor, Maryland. "All the content that's created for the Sphere in Vegas and, eventually, Abu Dhabi, will also play in any of these small Spheres," Mr Dolan said on the August 2025 earnings call, adding that the small format was designed as a franchise (The Stadium Business). "I think it's very possible we'll have another announcement this year," Mr Dolan told analysts on July 30, according to an Investing.com transcript. "We're in pretty serious discussions with a couple of different marketplaces."
Competition in domed venues is growing. On June 25 Sony Pictures Entertainment invested $100 million in Cosm for a minority stake. Cosm has opened venues in Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta, with Detroit due this month and Cleveland early next year, mixing live sports with film and concert programming.
K-pop VR concerts in 28 cities, ARTE MUSEUM at $6 million a month, Seoul Arena next year
BLACKPINK (블랙핑크) member LISA plays four nights of VIVA LA LISA at Caesars Palace's 4,300-seat Colosseum on November 13, 14, 27 and 28, billed by Caesars as the first Las Vegas residency by a K-pop artist. Consequence reported the April 23 general sale sold out in ten minutes. No K-pop act has played the Sphere, and Luminate's analysis did not cover K-pop.
Moving K-pop concerts into immersive formats started in cinemas. AmazeVR, led by chief executive Lee Seung-jun (이승준), produces and distributes K-pop VR concerts watched on headsets in theatres. Its first overseas release, TOMORROW X TOGETHER's "Hyperfocus", sold about 230,000 tickets in 28 cities worldwide, and ENHYPEN's VR concert "Immersion" set the company's record (Nate, April 17). TWS's VR concert passed 20,000 viewers in 22 days after its March release, more than the group's largest single domestic live show (Ilgan Sports, 일간스포츠, April 1). A LE SSERAFIM VR concert followed.
Exhibitions are combining K-pop IP with immersive technology too. EnterTech·GES Seoul 2026, which opened at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (동대문디자인플라자) on September 17, features location-based VR built on FIFTY FIFTY's IP and 360-degree VR of SM Entertainment artists' stages (Diplomacy Journal, 외교저널).
A Korean company is already in Las Vegas's immersive business. d'strict (디스트릭트) opened ARTE MUSEUM (아르떼뮤지엄) Las Vegas, about 3,300 square metres, in the 63 Las Vegas complex on the Strip in November 2023 at a production cost of $25 million (Asia Economy, 아시아경제). Its New York site, opened in autumn 2025, passed 100,000 visitors in two months, and the two U.S. venues took $6 million in November 2025. It is preparing Santa Monica for 2026 and Orlando for 2027 (KMJ, December 2, 2025).
Large venues are coming. Seoul Arena (서울아레나), backed by Kakao (카카오) and holding up to 28,000 people in Chang-dong (창동), opens in the first half of next year as Korea's largest dedicated pop-music venue. Announcing its "K-Enter Town Chang-dong" plan on April 21, the Seoul city government said it expects shows of around 30,000 people roughly every three days and 2.7 million foreign visitors a year (Kukinews, Newsis). The operating company will run the venue for 30 years after completion.
Hanam Urban Development Corporation (하남도시공사) is taking bids until September 30 for K-Star World, a 1.18 million square metre site in Misa-dong for a K-pop arena, a film and media complex, a theme park and hotels, targeted for 2034. The winner must build an arena of at least 20,000 seats on at least 50,000 square metres, donate it to the city and operate it for 30 years through a project-finance vehicle in which the public side holds 50% plus one share. More than 70 companies, including Daewoo E&C, Hyundai Engineering, Hanwha and IGIS Asset Management, attended a June 26 briefing. Mayor Lee Hyun-jae (이현재) said in October 2025 that Sphere's participation, agreed in an earlier memorandum, was "at a standstill for now", and that a conventional arena would be built if Sphere stayed out (CTNews, 시티뉴스). Yonhap (연합뉴스) reported criticism in April that key approvals, including green-belt release, were not yet in place.
Venue, artists, IP owners and brands share an immersive ecosystem; Korea's task is the content that links its pieces
Three years in, the Sphere's economics are shared among four parties. Artists bring demand at a $238 average ticket; the venue returns a post-run lift in streaming that raises the value of their catalogues; IP owners and technology companies co-produce venue-specific films, and partner brands sell products built on that film IP. The Wizard of Oz rebuilt Warner Bros. Discovery's library title with Google's generative AI and VFX and sold $450 million in tickets in a year to guests from more than 140 countries, though the revenue split with Warner Bros. has not been disclosed (Screen Daily, June 10, 2025). The arrangement does not work for everyone: Chesney and the Eagles grossed heavily without a streaming lift, and the venue's biggest gains came from its own film rather than from rented-out concerts. Mr Dolan's reported approaches over Harry Potter and Star Wars point to library IP as the source of the next titles.
That content does not stay in one building. The Abu Dhabi agreement lets Sphere license its Experiences to the new venue for an annual fee, and Mr Dolan has said the small Spheres will play the same content, so a single piece of venue content can play across a growing network. Cosm, too, has put film and concert IP at the centre of its plans since Sony's investment.
Korea has the pieces of such an ecosystem, but they are scattered. K-pop IP sits with the agencies, cinema VR concerts with AmazeVR, immersive media art with d'strict, and big venues are arriving with Seoul Arena next year and Hanam's tender. The Sphere has tied these pieces together in one building: films made for the venue are licensed to other venues, and residencies lead to streaming and merchandise. Korea's pieces still operate in separate spaces and revenue models. The missing element is venue-specific content that links them in one format.
For Korean media and content companies, the largest opening is supplying that content. Broadcasters and studios with drama, film and K-pop concert libraries, and VFX firms working with generative AI, have skills that overlap with how The Wizard of Oz was made. d'strict's $6 million month in Las Vegas and New York shows a Korean company can build immersive content and sell it to American audiences. Producing for a 16K spherical screen with haptic and environmental effects is a different process from ordinary video, however, so partnerships with specialists such as Magnopus would come first. Sphere's practice of co-developing venue-exclusive products with partner brands is also where agencies' existing merchandise capabilities could be written into a residency deal.
K-pop residencies are the second route. Two of Luminate's conditions for a streaming lift, visual production and an online-active fan base, match K-pop concerts. Anyma's path, booked on production values and lifting his older catalogue through social sharing, looks closer to the likely K-pop case than the legacy-act route; that judgement rests on the conditions, not on Luminate data. Agencies negotiating such runs would need to weigh online rights to concert footage and catalogue consumption around the shows alongside ticket settlement, and to test whether their fans will pay a $238 average ticket.
Brand events are the third route. Delta and Lenovo have used the Sphere for CES keynotes, and Exosphere advertising is selling on multi-year terms. For Korean electronics, automotive and content companies that attend CES in force, that means a stage and a billboard in the middle of Las Vegas.
The same logic applies at home. If 20,000-plus-seat venues such as Seoul Arena and Hanam's K-Star World count only rental income, they will miss the line that has grown fastest at the Sphere. Deciding at the operating-plan stage what to screen on nights without concerts, and who will produce it, is the condition the Sphere's results suggest. K-pop VR concerts already proven in overseas cinemas could be a starting point.
The next data points are close. Metallica's 24-show run from October will show whether a legacy rock act follows U2 or Chesney and the Eagles. LISA's November shows at the Colosseum are not a like-for-like comparison but will give K-pop its first residency record for box office and streams. Sphere's third-quarter results will show whether Oz holds up in its second year and whether the promised enhanced version brings viewers back.
A third Sphere location is due between year-end and the first quarter of 2027, and Hanam will choose a preferred bidder after September 30, and Seoul Arena stages its first shows in the first half of next year. Whether that new location is in Asia, and whether Korean companies enter its content supply chain, are the questions for Korea's content industry next year.
Sources
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