A view of the MSG Sphere at The Venetian during a hard hat tour Tuesday May 24, 2022. MSG Entertainment employees and construction partners celebrated a topping out of the venue’s steel exosphere following the tour.
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 | 12:35 p.m.
The main structural work on the MSG Sphere concert and event venue just off the Las Vegas Strip is nearly complete, the builder announced today.
The venue, a partnership between Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. and the Venetian, will be the largest spherical structure in the world, an MSG official said.
With the steel shell that will hold an array of LED screens nearly finished, construction workers took a break this morning for a topping-out ceremony.
“Because of the geometry of the structure, this was one of the complex parts of the project,” said Nick Tomasino, senior vice president of construction for the project.
About 775 tons of steel were used for the screen support system, Tomasino said. The placement of the LED screens is expected to start in the next few weeks, he said.
“The LED system inside the Sphere will be the size of three football fields and will have the highest resolution in the world,” Tomasino said.
The venue, which will seat 17,500 people, with a capacity of 20,000 when standing room space is included, should be open by the second half of next year, officials said.
It will host concerts, e-sports events, sporting events like mixed martial arts and boxing matches, and corporate events.
The nearly $1.9 billion structure will have 23 suites and an under-stage VIP area. The sound system will feature more than 164,000 individual speakers.
The Sphere is 366 feet tall and more than 500 feet wide. It will have 580,000 square feet of programmable lighting.
About 1,400 people are working at the construction site, just east of the Venetian Convention and Expo Center, Tomasino said.
Construction started in 2018. Work was paused in early 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic but resumed later that year.
Tomasino said most of the steel for the Sphere was secured before the pandemic, which meant MSG officials didn’t have to sweat any pandemic-caused steel supply chain disruptions.
