Skift Take
James Dolan’s Sphere business continues to grow, but as it does, the costs are becoming stratospheric.
Sphere Entertainment Co. announced its plans in October for a venue in Abu Dhabi, its second location outside of Las Vegas (not counting a failed effort in London). The company’s CEO James Dolan said during an earnings call Tuesday that it can handle more.
“I think that we’re certainly interested in future Sphere announcements and expanding into other marketplaces. [If] you’re wondering whether we’re pushing the envelope still, we definitely still are. We definitely want to build in multiple places. We’ve built an organization that can handle the construction of multiple Spheres at the same time. And so yes, we’re still moving.”
Sphere Entertainment didn’t give a timeline on the Abu Dhabi project, nor a price tag, but it did provide more details on the fee structure:
- Sphere Entertainment will receive a franchise initiation fee, which grants the Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi the right to build the venue using Sphere IP.
- Sphere Entertainment will be paid for both pre- and post-opening services that leverage the company’s “expertise in infrastructure.”
- Sphere Entertainment will receive royalty fees for the IP that Abu Dhabi will be using.
- Experience Abu Dhabi brand is now an official partner of Sphere in Las Vegas, which the company is already making money from.
Surging Revenue, But Continued Losses
For its first quarter of fiscal 2025, the company reported that revenues nearly doubled to $227.9 million from a year earlier. Operating losses widened to $117.6 million.
Dolan said: “Look, we built this company not to operate one building in Las Vegas, right? A lot of the overhead and stuff that you see for instance in the [financial] report, right, is still about the growth of the company, particularly in the case of Abu Dhabi with our construction and development division.”
“As we have said, running multiple event types on the same day is a focus of ours.”
Days before the Sphere in Abu Dhabi was announced, Skift reported that the company had registered trademarks across the UAE, Oman and Qatar, suggesting the possibility of multiple locations in the region. The trademark “Sphere Oman” was among them.
Dolan said: “This past quarter, we hosted the UFC, which became our highest-grossing single event so far. The Eagles recently extended their multi-month run again with new days into March. And next week, we welcome back Formula One and the Las Vegas Grand Prix as part of our multiyear agreement.
