LAS VEGAS — In the lead-up to the NHL Draft’s acquisition of Sphere, it was easy to be cynical about the entire operation.
The location? Some kind of gimmick. The timing? Remarkably bad. Maybe next year we can announce the first pick while the Stanley Cup champions are making their rounds, and then open free agency before they even step off the ice. The weather? Hotter than any human should have to endure for what should be an enjoyable experience. I was ready to be disappointed, and I was ready to be annoyed.
It’s just as easy to pinpoint when that cynicism — hard-earned and understandable to anyone who’s followed the league, let alone covered it professionally for a minute or two — has melted away. That happened when I walked into the building.
Everyone involved in the first round – as a live, in-person event for the people who matter most – absolutely nailed it. The competition. The venue. The graphics teams. Whoever nearly hit me in the face with a camera drone. Full marks all around.
Friday night I spent three hours walking around Sphere, the 18,600-seat, LED-clad, one-of-a-kind giant venue, wondering if I wouldn’t be amazed, awed, or pleasantly surprised. Things may change in the light of day, but… I don’t think it has happened. Home to the world’s largest and highest resolution screens, it’s apparently not just a place to see U2. Who would have thought that?
• The last time I was in Las Vegas, during a second round of the 2023 playoffs, the venue was still under construction. That meant acres of fences, ropes and barrels separating pedestrians from the site. I wondered how accessible it would be from the Strip itself; a mile in Vegas can feel like a marathon. The walk from the heart of the Strip, temperatures aside, was easy enough. In addition, there is a pedestrian bridge connected to the Venetian.
• The location itself looks like a grounded Death Star. If you’ve seen it and it’s become almost impossible to miss, then you know it. That seems to be a feature, not a bug – it also felt like the Death Star. The aesthetic of the entranceway is shiny, black and menacing. It wasn’t much like walking around in an Apple package.
• Perhaps my biggest question was how people would navigate the building itself. We understand how arenas work, because their walls don’t double as a 160,000-square-foot screen. Concourses can stretch around the entire perimeter. Not so at Sphere; there are four main concourses, plus two more along a couple of suite levels, that dead-end well before the center. It took me two minutes or less to walk from end to end.
A view of the seats from the ground floor. (Sean Gentille/The Athletic)
There is a bit more elbow room than a standard NHL arena, partly because there is less room for concessions. Prices are ridiculous, but not special; arenas are expensive and Las Vegas is Real expensive, but $15 for a large house beer and $14 for a souped-up hot dog are also not uncommon. Could you have paid $110 for a double pour of Don Julio 1942? Certainly. It’s still Vegas.
The main hall. (Sean Gentille/The Athletic)
• My first glimpse of the screen – it feels wrong to refer to something that as such takes up your entire field of view, but whatever – came at the end of the tunnel leading to the floor. The screening, about 90 minutes before the first pick, was intended to mimic the view from ice level in a real NHL arena. Within the target, specifically. My immediate impulse was to lie down and stare at the ceiling. I resisted.
A view from “inside” the net. (Sean Gentille/The Athletic)
• At one point at the 200 level, some fans asked an usher to take their photo in front of the screen. It seems like a standard request. No. “That’s the first one I ever got,” she said. “People usually realize that they can take a better photo from their own chair.”
• The best seat in the house may have been the highest. As the first pick approached, I rode the elevator to Level 7 and camped behind the last row of seats, where Sharks fans Richard Wincor and Nathan Hernandez awaited the arrival of their friends. They had bought tickets as soon as they went on sale; San Jose had the first pick, and Macklin Celebrini, as good as he may be, wasn’t the only draw. Most importantly, the Sharks had the first pick and they would make it in a unique spot in Vegas.
“I would have come anyway,” Lincor said. He drove 8 1/2 hours from the Bay Area and Hernandez flew from Utah. A member of their group recently broke her foot, so everyone moved to a row of accessible seating just a few feet away from the literal back of the building. They realized they had been upgraded as soon as they made the short walk through the tunnel. A nearby security guard told them this shortly before the aforementioned drone incident. “Everyone likes it here,” he said.
(The same gentleman said the graphics packages were as good as he’s seen, and he’s been with them since day 1. The event itself was fun, he said. “But I’m a U2 fan, so the bar is set high. ” Fair.)
The view from the last row. (Sean Gentille/The Athletic)
• The graphics packages themselves followed a specific script; Once a team was on the clock, a 90-second sizzle reel played (everyone apparently did great last season), followed by a 30-second stylized shot of the city skyline. Other packages (logo mosaics, selections for the Four Nations classic, photos of the team’s best players on the clock) were also interspersed. One of the transitions between the screens mimicked the formation of ice over the entire screen. It got me every time.
• Another graphic element I appreciated: heavy use of a fake X-ray effect that placed a circle at the highest point of the screen itself. Without it it would have been easy to become disoriented. This helped us maintain a sense of place. According to movies I’ve seen, this is how pilots use the horizon when their instruments fail.
(Sean Gentille/The Athletic)
• Perhaps the star of the show was the trade announcement screen. That was a point of distinction between, say, a Dead and Co. show and the concept—it wasn’t scripted or timed out. It had to happen spontaneously. The resolution of the screen, literally the highest in the world, added “texture” to the goalposts, and every time it ran, Gary Bettman’s delight became a little harder to hide.
Another marketing flourish that actually broke through: Graphics, jointly created by the league and Sphere Studios, that were displayed on the exterior of the venue, alongside live feeds from the ESPN broadcast beamed toward the Strip. That 580,000-square-foot screen, dubbed “The Exosphere,” is covered in 1.23 million puck-shaped LEDs, each about four inches in diameter and covered with 42 diodes
The moment Macklin Celebrini is selected as the first overall outside The Sphere photo.twitter.com/wiSSos3lsr
— Hailey Salvian (@hailey_salvian) June 28, 2024
• Ultimately, though, this was a night for the people in the building. If there’s a greater sign of enthusiastic fandom – of actually caring about the sport and the teams that play it – than paying to attend a draft, I’ve yet to see it. Whether Friday night turns out to be a crossover event, a template for future events or a really cool unique event, it was worth it.
(Top photo: Dave Sandford/NHLI via Getty Images)
