LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - OCTOBER 30: Sphere lights up on October 30, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The 17,600-seat, 366-foot-tall, 516-foot-wide music and entertainment venue is the largest spherical structure on Earth and features an Exosphere with a 580,000-square-foot display, the largest LED screen in the world. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

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If you think Live Nation is a monopoly, then the Sphere in Las Vegas mocks you. Its young but remarkable existence as the world’s highest-grossing entertainment venue isn’t necessary to discredit Live Nation’s attackers, but it’s surely effective. That’s because the Sphere wasn’t supposed to be the Sphere.

As a recent story in the Wall Street Journal indicated, when the Sphere opened three years ago, "it had all the signs of an impending disaster.” Few other than owner James Dolan saw its potential.

Yet even there, Dolan likely risked his entertainment conglomerate, which includes the New York Knicks, New York Rangers and Madison Square Garden, on what few expected to succeed. Evidence supporting the previous claim can be found in the fact that the Sphere was not just “years behind schedule” according to the Journal, it was also nearly $1 billion over budget.

Construction on the venue began in 2018. Most readers can probably see where this is heading. Its creation coincided with lockdowns related to the coronavirus, the very lockdowns that had the future of live entertainment venues very much in question. Which requires a quick pivot back to Live Nation.

While its turnkey entertainment operation is described as a “monopoly” today, do readers want to guess how those same critics might have described Live Nation in the spring of 2020 when, in the words of the Journal’s report on the Sphere, “the future of live entertainment venues was in doubt”? Hopefully the question answers itself.

If not, the share price of Live Nation amid the lockdowns will provide any clarity that doesn’t presently exist. The same entity seen as an impossible to beat “concert promoter, artist manager, venue owner, and ticket seller and reseller” in 2024 when the DOJ instigated its antitrust attacks, was seen as being in all the wrong businesses just four years prior. Which is where the Sphere comes back into the story.

Not only did Dolan soldier through the lockdowns, construction overages, followed by skepticism that even the finished product wouldn’t prove viable, he also had to endure investor skepticism. Remember, even upon completion the Sphere was expected to be “a disaster.” This showed up in its stock price.

Even as recently as last year, and after the popularity of the Sphere was well established, its shares were trading at $26. Today they fetch $129. Live Nation’s executives no doubt relate. As evidenced by its market beating returns, and occasionally sickening descents (see 2020 again), Live Nation had to endure a lot of skepticism before it got to where it is today.

Which is the point, or should be. Much as few expected Live Nation to become Live Nation, the same was speculated about the Sphere. Yet as the Sphere’s rise from disaster-in-the-making to a concert venue that will eventually be erected in major cities around the world reminds us, the future of entertainment is the picture definition of opaque.

Looking back to 2024 when the DOJ’s meritless antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation began, then antitrust head Jonathan Kanter lamented about Live Nation that “Some monopolies are just so entrenched, and some problems so difficult to address, that they require decisive and effective solutions.” As with skeptics of the Sphere, Kanter plainly couldn’t see into the future as antitrust attorneys plainly cannot. Needless to say, the Sphere is a visual rebuttal of Kanter too, and all who would be so short-sighted as to describe Live Nation as a “monopoly.”