Sphere Entertainment is No. 14 on the list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2024. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.

Sphere, which lit up the Las Vegas sky for the first time in July, has been called—in true Sin City exaggeration—the eighth wonder of the world. Grandiosity aside, the concert venue is a technological marvel. The building’s globelike 580,000-square-foot LED exterior can be seen for miles across the Nevada desert. Inside, a 16K-resolution display plane wraps around and over the auditorium, while 10,000 haptic seats provide literal vibes to go along with the entertainment. An array of environmental effects (scents, breezes, and temperature changes) further stimulate audience’s senses.

But in 2016, the building was simply a rudimentary circle drawn by MSG owner James Dolan for his colleague David Dibble, CEO of MSG Ventures—a sketch of what Dolan envisioned to be a new kind of entertainment venue. Since nothing like Sphere had ever been built before—bragging rights include being the world’s biggest spherical structure and having the largest and highest-resolution LED screens in operation—Dibble and his team had to enlist vendors and partners that could figure out how to construct advanced audio and display systems at unprecedented scales, often devising technical solutions that didn’t yet exist. “There was virtually nothing that we could order right off the shelves,” says Dibble. “There’s no hyperbole in that. We tried.”

Many would-be vendors simply scoffed at the schematics. Dibble recalls a prospective business partner telling him, “That’s absolutely amazing—no way, good luck.” Some of the companies that took on the challenge were lesser known. Holoplot, a small Berlin-based manufacturer of audio technology, had been developing a PA system for Germany’s Deutsche Bahn railway when MSG approached it to discuss how its spatial audio techniques might be adapted for a concert-grade system. Holoplot’s tech now powers Sphere’s immersive sound system, which comprises some 167,000 loudspeaker drivers. (Holoplot has been named to the list of 2024’s Most Innovative Companies in Music.)

Dolan and Dibble’s ambitions are paying off. Within three months of its opening, Sphere had taken in $168 million and was profitable on an adjusted basis. Much of that haul is the result of U2’s residency, which was initially due to close in December but was extended to March. (In April, Phish moves in.) Sphere’s massive exterior, meanwhile, is home to custom ad campaigns for brands like Xbox and Coca-Cola, which reportedly cost in the neighborhood of $650,000 per week. (Sphere declined to confirm the figure, saying it doesn’t discuss sales strategies.) But Dibble says that at least half of the venue’s projections will be reserved for non-revenue-generating art, like the montage of winking emojis and animated images that christened the screen. “It’s just fun,” Dibble says. Perhaps most consequentially, Sphere’s shape could become MSG’s global calling card. The company is in active conversations about building dome-shaped venues in other cities (although a proposed London version recently fell through).

Dibble says he carried Dolan’s original Sphere sketch around in his backpack as a way of reminding himself and his team that they were trying to build the impossible. They were crossing their fingers up until the very moment it switched on. “I likened it to the Apollo missions,” he says. “You never truly know if that Saturn V is going to get off the launchpad.”

SPHERE’S EYE-POPPING TECH

Here’s a look at some of Sphere’s impressive features.

1. Exosphere
Sphere is the world’s largest globoid structure, with an exterior that offers 580,000 square feet of fully programmable LED space on the Las Vegas skyline. It’s a great billboard for companies like Xbox, but Sphere plans for at least 50% of the images it projects to be art.

2. Display Plane
Sphere’s main venue bowl features a massive screen that wraps up, over, and around the audience for a fully enveloping visual environment. At 16K by 16K, it’s the highest-resolution LED screen on Earth, and it’s designed and built by Montreal-based Saco Technologies.

3. Seats
Of Sphere’s nearly 18,000 seats, 10,000 use Italian company Powersoft’s haptic effects to more fully engage audiences. The seats use low-frequency audio transducers to make the seats vibrate  and shake during concerts and Sphere Experience short films.

4. Audio
Holoplot developed Sphere Immersive Sound for the venue. It includes 1,900 Holoplo X1 Matrix Array speaker modules with 167,000 individual speaker drivers  to deliver headphone-quality, personalized audio to every seat.

5. Environment
At Sphere, sensory overload is the name of the game, and that includes environmental effects to complement the experience. The venue can alter the temperature, create wind, and even deploy certain scents to create a “4D” experience for event attendees.

Explore the full 2024 list of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, 606 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. We’ve selected the firms making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, artificial intelligence, design, sustainability, and more.