- Sphere Entertainment soared 17% on Monday after opening weekend of the Sphere concert venue.
- The indoor venue hosted U2 for its sold-out debut concert, and the LED visuals inside were stunning.
- Videos of the concert lit up social media over the weekend.
Sphere Entertainment stock soared as much as 17% on Monday after its Sphere concert venue successfully completed its opening weekend with a U2 concert.
Videos of the sold-out concerts quickly went viral and lit up social media over the weekend as U2 played its hit songs in conjunction with mind-bending visuals displayed on a massive LED screen.
The Sphere entertainment venue is located in Las Vegas and boasts 1.2 million LEDs about the size of hockey pucks on its exterior. On the inside, the venue space has an immersive 160,000 square foot LED screen. The interior LED screen has a picture clarity of 16k, making it the largest and highest-resolution LED screen in the world.
Macquarie analyst Paul Golding attended the U2 show and said that it's "no hyperbole in calling it a revolutionary leap in live/experiential. Sophistication and uniqueness may make show adaptability challenging initially, but could equally draw a premium from artists."
Construction of the Sphere began in 2018 and was built by Madison Square Garden for a cost of about $2.3 billion.
Videos of the exterior LED screen, which cycles through different animations and advertisements during the evening, quickly went viral when the screen was turned on for the first time over the summer.
Madison Square Garden renamed its parent company to Sphere Entertainment earlier this year and spun-off some of its other more traditional New York-based entertainment venues into the publicly traded Madison Square Garden Entertainment.
The Sphere venue has a seating capacity of just under 18,000. U2 has a 25-show residency at the venue, with ticket prices ranging from about $400 to as high as $1,500.
Sphere Entertainment stock hit a high of $43.59 on Monday and is up 104% year-to-date.