Would you want to live next to a 300ft sphere like a vast spaceship pumping out neon adverts up to 24 hours a day? Furious residents try to stop the enormous new concert venue planned for London’s Olympic park

It started life as a simple paper sketch showing a stick figure standing inside a circle. But the man who drew this doodle had a pretty ambitious goal: ‘reinvent live entertainment’.

Seven years later, American business magnate James Dolan appears to have achieved just that. The recent opening of the MSG Sphere, a huge futuristic ball that looms over the Las Vegas desert landscape, stunned the world.

Built at a cost of $2.3 billion (£1.9 billion), it is both the largest spherical structure on the planet and the most advanced entertainment venue in the world, thanks to its 1.2 million individual LED panels that comprise a wide ‘wraparound’ screen ‘.

The effect is to immerse the 18,600-capacity audience in what Dolan calls ‘glasses-free virtual reality’.

Then there are the 10,000 ‘haptic’ seats, which vibrate, allowing the audience to ‘feel’ the music pulsating from the venue’s 1,586 speakers, the largest such array in the world.

As U2 launched into the venue’s inaugural set two weeks ago – the first of a 25-date residency – many thought it was a spectacular new dawn for live entertainment. Even the band’s usually invincible frontman Bono – performing for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Sir Paul McCartney – seemed as bemused as his audience in the arena’s sheer sci-fi grandeur.

Bono asked: ‘Can you hear me whispering back? It cost $2.3 billion so you could hear that whisper?’ He added, wryly: ‘We should have brought (the money) back to the 22nd century.’

The audience – and the internet – were equally captivated by the immersive visuals that formed the backdrop to U2’s performance, featuring everything from a stunningly realistic dawn to a curtain of fiery embers through a portal made up of birds, butterflies and other animals.

“At one point they recreated full daylight at 11 o’clock at night, but it’s not just on a screen, it’s like you’re literally suddenly in daylight,” Steve Baltin, a music writer from Forbes magazine, who was on the show. told the Mail. ‘Effects complete the set. So while you might get lost in the visuals, you don’t get lost by much. Music is still the thing. It was amazing and unique.’

He wasn’t the only one who was surprised: ‘Just wow’ read an Instagram post from Jeff Bezos’ fiancee Lauren Sanchez, above a photo of what appeared to be a blinking eye backstage.

Superlatives abound, then, for a country that encountered no shortage of obstacles on the way to completion. However, the creation of a smaller ‘sister sphere’ 5,000 miles away in East London has caused a stir.

Despite strong resistance from locals, planning permission was granted last year for a London Sphere in the former Olympic Park – next to housing estates.

The 295-metre structure (almost as tall as Big Ben) will have capacity for 21,500 spectators and, like its sister in Vegas, will be covered in thousands of rotating LED screens, set to glow up to 24 hours a day with animated advertisements . One disgruntled resident compared it to ‘Piccadilly Circus rolled up in a ball’.

The controversy surrounding the London sphere could hardly be louder. But in Vegas there has been nothing but adoration. Creator Dolan, executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden entertainment group, toyed with the idea of ​​a muffin shape, a box and even a pyramid before settling on the 366-foot sphere.

Construction began in September 2018. Wrapping the LED panels – heat and wind resistant to withstand the desert climate – around 32 steel planks (each weighing 100 tons) was never going to be easy, and the pandemic led not only to two a year late to the planned 2021 opening, but a doubling of the estimated $1.2bn (£1bn) construction cost.

Finally, however, in July of this year, the outdoor screens lit up, treating startled residents to the sight of what appeared to be a giant bulging eye next to the famous Vegas strip.

However, artistic spectacles are not the main focus of the 580,000 square meter spherical canvas – inevitably, that is advertising. Leaked documents show Sphere will charge clients up to $650,000 (£530,000) for a week of advertising, making it the most expensive billboard in the world.

Sphere’s dazzling exterior displays have also provoked a serious unintended side effect – an increase in car accidents, as dazzled drivers slow down to get a better look. According to The Las Vegas Review Journal, there were 27 crashes in the four-week period after the Sphere was first lit, compared to 37 in the previous two months. Tour guide Dominic Mirasol told reporters: “You have to be on guard while you’re driving through the area.”

“On guard” sums up the mood of residents near the proposed East London site, too. “We call it The Blob, not the Sphere,” says Jane Earle, a retired teacher who lives in the Newham suburb.

Along with dozens of others, Jane belongs to a protest group called Stop MSG Sphere London, which was formed in March 2018 after plans for the new venue were first mooted.

She has lived in the area for 28 years and her home is just a few streets from the proposed site. “As soon as the name Madison Square Garden came up in connection with the development, along with a sense of what it was going to be, I was immediately excited,” she says.

Jane wasn’t the only one: many residents in local tenements discovered that their view of the London skyline would soon be replaced by 90-foot-tall neon advertising screens that could flicker day and night. Some residential houses are only 50 meters away, where residents are offered blackout blinds as compensation. “So this great organization is providing something that we used during the Blitz in the 1940s to protect against some of the effects of this high-tech waste project,” says Jane. “It’s an insult.”

Around 1,000 residents have objected to the planning application and not just because of the predicted light pollution. Some worry that the nearby subway station will struggle to handle the expected flood of concertgoers; while others simply don’t want to live near a construction site.

Andrew Nix, a 38-year-old IT worker, moved into his flat in the former Olympic Park with his wife Sinead a week before the closure in March 2020.

A real estate agent told him that the building opposite would be a school. “No mention of a great place of entertainment,” he says wryly. His experience was shared by other tenants and landlords, including a couple who discovered plans for the Sphere via a residents’ leaflet on their doormat after being handed the keys to their new flat last year.

Like Jane, Andrew says he was immediately alarmed when he heard about the plans through his local dog walking network. “There’s a personal impact: the light pollution is going to be crazy. I’m also concerned that the negatives far outweigh the benefits in a field I love.’

His concerns are shared by many in his New Garden District development, many of whom are planning to leave if the Sphere goes ahead. “I think living here will be like being inside the dome itself,” says fellow resident Pia Maitri, who has rented her ground-floor apartment opposite the proposed site for four years, but has decided to leave if she continues.

“Everyone is very much against it, but the general feeling is that it will happen regardless. If I owned the property, I would sell it. No one will want to buy a place that has LED lights shining on it.’

Not everyone agrees: the project has many supporters who claim the arena will boost the capital’s economy by £2.5 billion and bring huge benefits to the area.

But along with other shocked locals, Andrew and Jane believe there has been a lack of transparency in the process. The plans are also opposed by West Ham Labor MP Lyn Brown, who has branded the scheme “a monstrosity” and raised fears of increased pressure on local transport. The planning of the Sphere is overseen by the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the body responsible for the former Olympic Park.

Jane says: ‘The LLDC is not democratically elected, but appointed by the mayor, and we feel they are not accountable to the community. Many of us feel that there was almost no consultation. There are many people who still have no idea about the plans.’

The LLDC told the Mail: ‘The planning application was examined in detail by the independent planning committee with considerable effort made to ensure that local residents, businesses and other stakeholders had the opportunity to make their views known.’ He says the comments of local residents were made clear in the decision committee report and the application will now be referred to chairman Sadiq Khan.

None of this seems to have deterred the indefatigable Dolan. Speaking to entertainment industry bible Variety last month, he said the London project is ‘still very much moving forward’ along with a number of others around the world.

But not in Stratford if Jane and Andrew have their way.

“We’re not going to give up the fight,” Jane says. “We will fight to the end.”

“The Sphere idea looks great,” adds Andrew. “Just not here.”