UFC 306 at The Sphere: MSG Entertainment's Joel Fisher Goes Inside The Sphere's First Live Sporting Event With Noche UFC By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. Thursday, September 12, 2024 - 3:24 pm
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On Saturday night, a new era in live sports will dawn with the first ever live sporting event to be hosted at The Sphere in Las Vegas. UFC 306 at Riyadh Season Noche UFC is being dubbed as a once-in-a-lifetime immersive sporting event that will utilize Sphere's next-gen tech to create an entirely different kind of live event experience. Following more than a year of planning and collaboration between the UFC and the venue's owner, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, Saturday night's event will finally bring the power of The Sphere to live sports.
Joel Fisher, EVP, Marquee Events and Operations, Madison Square Garden Entertainment
Dana White, who says the event cost $20 million to produce, calls UFC 306 at Riyadh Season Noche UFC a love letter' to Mexico and a tribute to the Mexican people for their contributions to combat sports. In celebration of Mexican Independence Day, UFC has created a series of films that will take over the 160,000 sq. ft. and 16K x 16K resolution interior display plane during the event. In addition to the world's highest resolution LED display and advanced concert-grade audio system, fans inside the Sphere will be able to genuinely feel the action thanks to the venue's haptic seats, which provide force feedback based on the action in the Octagon. In addition, the Exosphere will be utilized throughout the night with key art and highlights to bring fans closer to the event, while in-house stats and information feeds will showcase real-time stats and fighter information integrated onto the interior display plane of Sphere.
In anticipation of this historic production, SVG sat down with Joel Fisher, EVP, Marquee Events and Operations, Madison Square Garden Entertainment, to discuss how UFC came to be the first live sport to take place in The Sphere, his company's collaborative relationship with White and the UFC, what fans can expect inside - and outside - the venue on Saturday night, the key differences between presenting a U2 concert experience and live sporting event at The Sphere, and what other sports he expects to welcome to the venue in the future.
Can you tell me how the initial idea for this event came about?
We [at Madison Square Garden] have a long history as I think with the UFC, including helping them get sanctioned for the first event here in New York with UFC 205. We invited Dana to see U2 at The Sphere and he was absolutely blown away. He called me the next day to say UFC wanted to be the first live sporting event in The Sphere. That was the beginning of months of conversations and planning.
And once the event was finalized, what did the early planning stages look like?
We all agreed that if we were going to do this and do it right, we needed to plan well in advance and all have a unified vision of what this was going to look like. So about a year ago, I met with Craig Borsari [Chief Content Officer and Executive Producer] and Pete Dropick [EVP, Event Development & Operations] during a Top Rank boxing event here at the Garden and we worked closely together from that point forward to ensure that everything was perfect.
The sphere really was a vision directly from our chairman and CEO Jim Dolan. And he just really wanted to create this new medium that disrupted the traditional venue model and shook up an industry that hasn't been innovated in a long time. So to be able to deliver the first live sporting event and broadcast it to the world - there will be as many as a billion people watching - is very exciting for both us and UFC.
Can you take me inside what the experience will look like for fans on Saturday night?
The experience starts before you've even entered [the venue] because we have the exosphere, which creates a one-of-a-kind visual experience. Then once you get into the building, fans will be able to explore and interact with immersive technology experiences in the Atrium. The UFC is taking over the entire atrium and decorating it around the theme of Mexican Independence Day. So the second you walk in, you'll feel that you're immersed in this special event, including a mariachi band and a variety of content on the different displays.
And we also have plenty of exciting moment leading up to the fight. On Thursday, we are doing the press conference right outside in one of our parking lots with The Sphere as the background. On Friday, they will do the weigh-in outside in front of the sphere with UFC creative [content] on the exosphere. And UFC is also doing a fan fest starting on Friday that runs through the pre-fight preparations on Saturday.
On fight night, fans are going to experience something that's literally never been seen before in sports. We've worked with UFC on these six films that will be [displayed] on our incredible 16K media plane These interstitials will be seen throughout the night between the fights and will provide a tribute to Mexico and their history and fighting in MMA. So it should be really incredible. I've been fortunate to see a lot of the storyboards and content that they're presenting and it's going to be a genuine spectacle.
Then we also have an audio system that is unlike anything else you've ever heard, as well as haptic seats so that [fans] will actually feel it when somebody gets hit or hits the canvas. People inside the building are going to get this overall experience that you simply cannot match in a regular venue.
What are the major differences between presenting a live concert or entertainment event at The Sphere and producing a live sporting event? What are the pr
