The Vegas Sphere’s First Live Sporting Event Will Be an Expensive One

Noche UFC is costing about $20 million in a preview of the venue’s potential.

*Illustration: Nathan McKee for Bloomberg Businessweek*

Gift this article

Dana White, chief executive officer and president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, went to see U2 last October at the Sphere in Las Vegas and fell in love. The glowing orb, which cost $2.3 billion to build and features inside a 160,000-square-foot curved LED screen, was “the star of the show,” White says. “I was focused on the screen and what was going on, and then every once in a while I would peek over and look down at U2.”

White was so impressed by the venue that he called Craig Borsari, the UFC’s executive vice president for operations and production. “I could hear the concert going on in the background,” Borsari says, “and he said, ‘You’ve got to get out here and see this. I want to do a show here.’”

BloombergBusinessweek The Man Who Made Nike Uncool World’s Biggest Millionaire Boom Draws Wealth Managers to Taiwan College Football Players Learn an Ugly Truth About Getting Paid New Boss at Two-Century-Old Bank Shakes Up Brazilian Finance

On Saturday night, White will get his wish when the UFC hosts the first live sporting event at the Sphere. Although the headline bout is between Sean O’Malley—a rainbow-haired knockout artist with one loss in 19 fights—and Merab Dvalishvili—a native of Georgia who’s on a 10-fight win streak—the card will feature a handful of Mexican fighters. The evening is a celebration of Mexican culture in advance of the country’s Independence Day on Monday. “We have a very large Hispanic following—this is my love letter to Mexico,” White says. “This is about their history, the culture, their traditions, their contributions to combat sports. Some of the baddest dudes to ever walk this Earth have been Mexican, and this is a celebration of that.”

Between bouts, a film highlighting those contributions will play on the massive screen; the aim is to make each of the fights feel like part of a story being spun for up to 20,000 attendees. White enlisted Academy Award-nominated producer and director Carlos López Estrada (Raya and the Last Dragon, Summertime, Blindspotting) to work on the film. During the fights, the screen will display clouds, birds and fire. (This is Vegas, after all.) “The playbook is out the door for this show,” Borsari says. “Nothing about our approach and how we’re going to execute resembles what we would do on a typical Saturday night.”

That includes the price tag. Officially called Noche UFC (“UFC Night” in Spanish), the event is costing about $20 million to stage, White says, the most the UFC has spent on a night of programming. The typical budget for a special event is $2 million to $2.5 million. White says ticket sales should be in excess of $22 million, which would surpass the previous record of $17.7 million set in 2016, the first time the UFC held fights at New York’s Madison Square Garden. (The average ticket price for Noche is currently $1,681, according to the Gametime ticket app.)

Since 2017 the UFC has had a deal at MGM’s T-Mobile Arena, which is home to the NHL’s Golden Knights. That’s where the UFC assumed it would hold Noche this year. But in a scheduling snafu, MGM Resorts International gave the Sept. 14 date to a boxing promoter; to make amends, the company allowed the UFC to get out of its exclusivity agreement for a night.

For the UFC, a successful evening is determined not just by the gate but also by how smooth the live broadcast is, how many people pay to watch on TV and how exciting the fights are. No matter how successful it is, White says, the company is likely to make this a one-time thing because of its arrangement with MGM.

For Sphere Entertainment Co. and its executive chairman and CEO, James Dolan (who also owns Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp.), success could be determined by what comes next. If promoters see the Sphere as a viable place for live sports, it creates a revenue stream when there’s no rock star performing and everyone’s seen the 55-minute Darren Aronofsky film, Postcard From Earth, that’s played there regularly.

Get the Business of Sports newsletter

The collision of power, money and sports, delivered weekly.

Bloomberg may send me offers and promotions.

By submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

Las Vegas is already thought of as the fight capital of the world. So it wouldn’t be a stretch for Sphere Entertainment to consider hosting boxing at its new venue. Serious promoters such as Eddie Hearn, chairman of Matchroom Sport, and Bob Arum, CEO of Top Rank Boxing, have expressed interest. “There’s already been discussions about boxing events taking place in the Sphere,” Hearn told Bloomberg News in February, “and it’s only a matter of time. I do think the Sphere is good for the sport of boxing because historically with those arenas, you’re working with MGM, and now that’s changed.” (MGM also owns Michelob Ultra Arena and the Marquee Ballroom, the city’s main boxing venues.) Arum said in January on The 3 Knockdown Rule, a boxing podcast, that Dolan “is a very good friend of mine, and he wants Top Rank to do the first boxing event at the Sphere.” Sphere Entertainment declined to comment for this story.

It’s hard to imagine that this one event could have an effect on the UFC’s media rights deal, which expires at the end of next year. But if it’s well-received, it could certainly add more to the company’s luster. All UFC events are now available for purchase exclusively on ESPN+, as part of a $1.5 billion contract agreed to in 2018.

A lot has changed since then. The UFC’s sibling company, World Wrestling Entertainment (both are owned by TKO Group Holdings Inc.), entered into a 10-year, $5 billion deal with Netflix Inc. earlier this year to bring its Raw show to the streaming giant. The UFC could follow suit, given its parent company’s existing affiliation with Netflix, with its shows The Ultimate Fighter, Dana White’s Contender Series and Fight Inc: Inside the UFC. “We could end up being like the NFL and other sports where we could be on multiple platforms or just one,” White says. “We’re in those talks right now.” Neither Netflix nor ESPN has commented on them publicly.

David Joyce, a senior equity analyst at Seaport Research Partners, says “the path of least resistance” is the UFC re-signs with ESPN. Joyce notes that at a Goldman Sachs conference on Sept. 11, Mark Shapiro, TKO’s president and chief operating officer, said “folks underestimate how much money ESPN and [parent company] Disney spend on a weekly basis promoting our UFC fights.” For his part, White recently told Sports Business Journal that, though the conversations are in a good place right now, he’s previously been “headbutting with ESPN.” For a sport known for much more violence, that doesn’t seem so bad.

In this Article