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Comment by t3rabytes | Hacker News Reader

I gotta be honest, I'm not sure what was expected? They spent $2b building this thing, it's brand new tech, it didn't host many shows last quarter (it was open for 1? full month of the quarter).

I still think The Sphere is super damn cool and I can't wait to go to an event there.

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Same reaction here. For such a huge investment wouldn't you expect it to take some time before it becomes profitable?

Live shows are only one piece of the puzzle. I really want to go see the "postcard from earth" short film they made especially for the Sphere. The filming required all kinds of specialized camera gear to take full advantage of the resolution and 3d viewing inside, so it's no wonder there isn't going to be an immediate catalog of titles to choose from for selling more tickets.

They're also basically killing any locals going with the cost of concessions and probably driving a lot of people to just not spend any money there. At $40 for a double shot and $20 for a beer, I'd be drinking before I got to the venue if that were my thing.

https://www.outkick.com/drink-prices-vegas-sphere-beer-liquo...

That's nearly Ibiza prices.... which is OK if everyone is doing the same thing (well, I say OK, you know what I mean). But if there's any other option, no-one's going there. I've only been once to Vegas, but I don't remember it being pricy.

Vegas has gotten way more expensive over the past 20 years. Now comparable to Silicon Valley prices

> I don't remember it being pricy

You clearly haven’t been there in the last few years. $16 for a beer is the norm at clubs and bars if you’re not gambling.

I last went to Vegas in 2014, and in the hotel pool bar it was $16 for a small bottle of Budweiser. I had a rather dry trip at those prices.

The trick is to go to the CVS and Walgreens on the strip and load up with relatively cheap beer and avoid the exhortation from the casinos.

Are you suggesting chugging cheap beers as fast as you can in the drugstore parking lot?

16yo me might have gone for that. Then again, I’ve never been to Vegas. Maybe it seems like a better idea in situ.

No, it was a long time ago (late 90s?). The hotel was cheap (Excalibur!), and other than seeing the Blue Man Group, everything else was very cheap. All you can eat breakfast was $10 and I ate so much I didn't eat again for 24 hours.

Oh yeah those days are long gone. At least on the strip.

Back then you could find $5 blackjack tables, and $3.99 buffets. Now a typical buffet on the strip will be $80 a person or something like that. The cheap blackjack tables are $25 a hand.

The strip is pricey, and has very little variety. The art district a couple of miles away and there are restaurants and bars with normal prices and great selection.

Ssshhh. I just discovered the Arts District on my visit last month. Let's not let it turn into what the rest of The Strip and old downtown have become.

BTW, The Sphere is amazing and U2 still puts on a good show. I did not partake in any $20 beers though.

The strip itself is roughly Palo Alto prices at small town truck stop quality. Small town truck stops are consistent and that’s a great thing, but McDonalds restaurants are always consistent too. You can find a very expensive smoky old fashioned (or whatever the fashionable cocktail is) pretty well everywhere and you won’t always be able to tell where you are.

Off strip is a lot more attractive both in terms of price and quality. But it’s harder to access unless you have trusted friends who live in Vegas. Locals seem to avoid the strip and seem to try to keep the strip away from their trusted spots!

It's the Strip, I'd assume you were pretty buzzed before you rolled up. That's probably part of the math here.

That doesn't make any sense. If you were already buzzed before going, then you would need a cheaper price to continue drinking, since you already have some in you. If you were dead sober and wanted to drink, then it makes sense to shell out the money.

If you were already buzzed before going, you're probably not making super sound financial decisions inside.

It's Vegas, people don't go there to make sound financial decisions :P

Possible counter-strategy is that the prices are high so people stay relatively tame inside. Who wants to pay ($20/unit of alcohol) to even try to get drunk?

Yea anyone who's visited Vegas knows that from the time your plane lands to when you takeoff, you're basically just spewing money to everyone constantly. I think there are at least 5-10 people just between your airline gate and your hotel room door with their hands out looking for tips.

Not a place to go if you're frugal.

Funny that this is the general perception of Las Vegas after 50 years of marketing itself as a budget destination

My boss came back from a vendor conference in Vegas recently and went to the sphere. He said in the 90s you could go and find a cheap all you can eat buffet full of steak and it was like $10 to get in. Drinks were $2 or something like that. But now you can expect to spend $40-$50 per meal for a single person.

Every place is expensive if you go for a few days as a tourist. SF is definitely more expensive. I lived in Vegas as a regular dweller, near the Mantis in downtown, for a few months, nothing particularly expensive there. To the contrary, you get free live concerts every day and basically free marijuana - just inhale the air around you!

> If you were already buzzed before going, then you would need a cheaper price to continue drinking

Because judgement and rational decision making are things that already being under the influence of alochol increases, rather than the opposite?

>They're also basically killing any locals going with the cost of concessions

Local residents are absolutely not the target audience for Vegas casinos and other attractions.

Vegas casinos offers super-cheap food and drink to lure gamblers. Locals take advantage of said low prices, but that's a side effect of the main purpose which is to keep tourists near the card tables and slot machines. The Sphere does not have gambling, thus needs the food and drink to pay their own way.

The loss seems surprisingly low, considering the cost of building the thing.

I don't expect this to end up like Brand-Briesen Airfield, or other massive buildings built and quickly sold at bankruptcy, anytime soon.

I would assume that operating loss wouldn't include the initial cost of building. Could be wrong though.

Could be loan repayments are rolled into the loss? Not that I have any particular knowledge.

You don't need to assume, it's confirmed in the very first sentence of the article.

Not only is it brand new, any prospective performance looking to book there is going to have to essentially create a bespoke show for that single venue only, that will not be able to be played anywhere else what with the big ass spherical screen being the primary differentiator.

In my mind this is like if you were to build the first IMAX theater if IMAX wasn't already a thing. You'd basically be asking Hollywood to create a special version of a movie for your single venue. Like... I'm sure some will take that up, as evident by it hosting a few shows. But it can't possibly be an "open every night" situation, the economics just don't make sense for that.

While your team would still need to be involved creatively, I would hope the sphere has an in house team to create content as well?

I would assume so but that means the venue itself is then subsidizing the cost of the performance, which means the tickets/refreshments/etc have to be more expensive.

And like, I want to emphasize: this thing is extremely cool. I love shit like this. I wish we could have more really cool things like this. But when your entire thrust is to make money... I mean I wish them all the success in the world but you'll have to put me down as a skeptic if they'll be able to, especially given how razor thin margins tend to be in the entertainment sector when the venue can just host regular ass shows that any venue can.

yep, they have a team and a studio in Burbank, including a functional (internal) miniature of the sphere and an in-house camera system:

https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tourism/sphere-techno...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/5MV2%2B4M,+Burbank,+CA

I saw both the U2 show and Postcard from Earth movie. Both were amazing in their own way, but the movie was a better demonstration of the technology if you have to choose one (and if you're not a big U2 fan).

The Sphere partnered with an immersive sound company Holoplot to design and build the sound system (https://holoplot.com/news/sphere-immersive-sound-powered-by-...) - this was very impressive during the movie and you could locate sound coming from exactly where the objects were on the screen in a way that I've not experienced before.

The experience was similar to wearing a VR headset since the screen covers almost your entire field of view, but the sound system significantly improved the feeling of immersion. During the movie, the system also pushed air onto the audience to simulate wind in a convincing way.

Sounds like an IMAX Dome.

It hosts shows? And here I had assumed it was just a big weirdly-shaped billboard, and that their business model was "selling ads on it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VuQHSVnnvs

You can go inside it, it is a large concert venue with a 360 screen/light show basically.

U2 played there, but I heard retail on the tickets was nearly $500.

Yeah if this was a stock, I’d be buying it today. The thing is great.

You'd want to wait to be part of recapitalization after a reorg is required. The deal is made on the buy, not buying someone else's bags.

EDIT: See gosub100's comment [1].

(not investing advice, educational purposes only)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38206727

Sure sounds like investing advice

Yes, but they’ve said it isn’t, which is apparently sufficient even if you run an ad saying “InvestCo is great, you can make a ton of money from them [terms & conditions apply, you may actually lose money instead, not investment advice]”

It's a silly affectation rooted in lawyers commenting about a generality in a context where specifics might be inferred.

Not English, just looks like it. Assume meanings of words at your own risk.

I have a feeling this one’s a bit different, the operating costs to keep that ball of one-off technology running have to be insane.

Apparently it is a stock? https://www.google.com/finance/quote/SPHR:NYSE?sa=X&ved=2ahU...

It is, which is why they have to report the loss. SPHR - let us know how it goes!

Fascinating, a brand new entity that effectively went public the day it began generating revenue. Are there other examples of this?

Pixar IPOed a week after Toy Story was released in theatres.

> Fascinating, a brand new entity that effectively went public the day it began generating revenue.

This isn't correct.

THe stock has been public since 2020. It just happens to own the Sphere.

Thank you for pointing that out. Also it was a spinoff of Madison Square Gardens which makes sense how it IPO'd pre revenue-

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1952073/000119312523...

This seems to be a pattern for expensive infra projects:

- Original company builds expensive piece of infrastructure

- Original company fails to make money on expensive piece of infrastructure

- Original company goes bust

- New company buys infrastructure cheap

- New company manages to run a profitable business

See Eurotunnel, Iridium, probably others I've forgotten.

It goes further back than this -- What do you think happened to the "joint stock companies" that funded English settlers going to the Americas? ;)

It's almost like MBAs teach C-level "executives" to have a goldfish time range understanding of profits

Started with the railroads

Makes you wonder if that wasn't the plan all along. The original company has a lot of investors who would share a big percentage of the profits if it is successful. Those in charge fix things so that those investors are shed and all the profits are instead funneled to entities they control exclusively.

I can imagine a ton of logistical constraints. They have U2 doing a residence, and I'd guess that residences are going to be the only options. Designing visuals on such a unique and complex display to match a specific artist is at least a few person-months of effort. You have to plan shows very far in advance and spend a lot of money on show production. This likely excludes anyone but the top-tier performers. And the exterior is basically just a giant ad. It's not a revenue-generator since you don't need tickets to see it.

Yes the design of the Sphere means it will never be a successful venue for touring acts. Any entertainer performing there will have to be committed to at least a month of shows, probably more.

That said, it's a unique concert experience even setting the visuals aside. The sound is immersive, coming from all around you rather than the wall of sound typical of most concerts. As such, while still plenty loud, your ears are not completely destroyed by the end of the night should you forget your hearing protection.

The fact that the exterior is a giant ad is exactly what makes it a revenue generator

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