(Credit: Sphere Entertainment)
Sphere Entertainment has announced plans for a second US venue following the buzz generated by its original Las Vegas location.
The new Sphere will be located in Maryland's National Harbor in Maryland just outside Washington, DC. It will be built with a combination of public and private funding, with around $200 million in state, local, and private incentives.
The Maryland Sphere would be a 6,000-seat venue, which is about a third less than the Vegas Sphere’s 17,600+ capacity. (The Vegas version uses 150 Nvidia A6000 GPUs to power its massive display.) It will have a 16,000-by-16,000-pixel wraparound LED screen on the inside and another dome-shaped display on the outside for artistic and promotional content.
Inside the dome, visitors will experience all of Sphere’s technologies, including immersive sound, haptic seating, and 4D effects such as wind, fog, smells, and more. The venue is expected to project content created or modified specifically for the wraparound experience, music concerts, and brand events.
Sphere Entertainment is calling the venue Sphere National Harbor, and it is expected to support 2,500 jobs during construction and 4,750 jobs once operational.
In Las Vegas, buying a one-day ad on the outside of the Sphere costs $450,000, while a one-week campaign is $650,000. Those were 2023 numbers, though, so it could be more now.
This would be the third Sphere dome overall, with a similar, smaller one in Abu Dhabi announced in October 2024. We've seen the Las Vegas Sphere in action during Delta's CES 2025 press event, as well as during Google's Cloud Next conference last year, where it demonstrated how Google's AI was used to rework The Wizard of Oz for The Sphere.