When UFC president and CEO Dana White said he was going to deliver what amounted to a “love letter to Mexico” for UFC 306 on the weekend of Mexican Independence Day, he couldn’t have chosen a more jaw-dropping space for the occasion.
Saturday’s title fight between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili was certainly the main event for “Noche UFC” — but for many, if not all, of the more than 16,000 fans in attendance, the real star of the show was the $2.3 billion Las Vegas Sphere, a stunning and one-of-a-kind arena with a 16K screen equivalent in size to four football fields. It was the Sphere’s first live sporting event since the venue opened to much fanfare last year, and it treated attendees to a slew of firsts. Like haptic seats, for one thing, which made it possible to literally feel each punch after it was thrown in the Octagon.
Another highlight of the event: An original film titled For Mexico, For All Time, narrated by actor Gael Garcia Bernal, played throughout the main card. Each chapter of the movie focused on a specific period in Mexican history, the idea being that the whole thing would tell the history of combat in Mexico starting from the beginning of time and continuing into the future. “I don’t know if [anyone has] ever seen anything like this,” White said Saturday after the event, per ESPN. “If you have, I don’t know where the f— you live or where you came from.”
He’d actually been fantasizing about pulling off a combination fight and multimedia event of this magnitude, for which the UFC spent a reported $20 million, since around this time last year.
One year ago this month, the Sphere began a sort of extended launch party in the form of a U2 concert residency. The band delivered a string of shows built around jaw-dropping visuals and the trippy spectacle made possible by the Sphere’s insane video wall. I was there for one of those U2 shows; at one point, Matrix-like code filled the cavernous space. A few seats over from me, an older man wearing a blazer turned to the woman beside him and exclaimed: “Holy fucking s—!”
From the outside, the Sphere looks like some sort of colossal electronic planet from the future that fell out of the sky, landing basically next door to the Venetian. It’s the largest spherical structure in the world, and its interior wall of screens is taller than a football field is long. I can’t stress this enough; if you ever get the chance to see it, this thing will blow your mind. It’s certainly the most Las Vegas thing I’ve ever seen.
White, meanwhile, was among the cavalcade of celebrities, including Paul McCartney, Matt Damon, Snoop Dogg, and many more, who flocked to one of those U2 shows. The night I was there, from my mezzanine seat, I could see Tom Hanks and Ed Sheeran up in the VIP row. The UFC CEO watched the show from Sphere owner James Dolan’s box, and almost immediately began fantasizing about holding the most ambitious sporting event ever at the Sphere.
Is the Sphere the future of sports entertainment? All I can say is, if so: Start saving up your money now. Floor seats for UFC 306 started at $12,000. Non-floor seats were a fraction of that, but still pricey (starting at $1,000). Celebs spotted in the crowd included Disney’s Bob Iger and Jeff Bezos fiancee Lauren Sanchez, but no one was really focused on them. All eyes were on the fighters in the ring and on the 366-foot tall screen behind them — a sea of smartphones held aloft, capturing every minute of the action from every possible angle.
