the Las Vegas sphere has to be one of the most controversial structures ever built how exactly did we get here it looks crazy but we used to build crazy stuff like this all the time just look at these images from past world's fairs people built tons of lavish buildings adorned with decorative architecture purely for the spectacle these events showcase The Cutting Edge of human Ingenuity incredible building projects designed to draw attention and highlight Innovative new technologies the telephone was introduced at the World's Fair in 1876 so was the world's first television even the Golden Gate
Bridge was opened at a World's fair and then we just seem to stop today we see critical infrastructure and beautiful architecture crumbling around us we need more ambitious projects call it what you want but it's undeniable that something very ambitious is happening out in the desert it's hard to think of a piece of architecture that has garnered more attention than the Las Vegas sphere how can this possibly be real sphere is ushering in a new era in Las Vegas mesmerized with the spheres outer appearance when it comes to the MSG sphere traffic stops and goes
nowhere this isn't an accident Beyond being the largest LED structure in the world the sphere represents something bigger about our culture the sphere's existence is a narrative violation in the truest sense of the term but beyond all the hype there's a story no one is talking about and it all revolves around the concentrated efforts of one man James Dolan this is a deep dive into The Man Behind the sphere the struggles that made him into the magnate he is today and three actionable lessons to take into your business career or everyday life now unless you're
an extremely dedicated basketball fan the name James Dolan probably means nothing to you that low profile is not a mistake Dolan is notoriously standoffish with the press and he takes great effort to control the narrative around his work often to his own detriment if you've read anything about Dolan you'll get this portrayal that he's a spoiled rich kid who had basically everything handed to him well this is mostly a media narrative it's also kind of true let's start with his family history the story of the sphere doesn't begin with James but rather his father Charles
Dolan or Chuck as he's known Chuck Was a Serial entrepreneur but his break came when he dived deep into the hottest emerging technology of the day cable television good evening all week long we've been talking about the first question to Senator kened away in full spectrum color with the rise of streaming Services video games and social media most young people don't remember how massive the Cable business really was but at one point cable was the business to be in it was where the startups of yesterday built their fortunes like many cable was where Chuck Dolan
james' father Stak his claim and built his family's wealth in 1962 at the age of 36 Chuck Dolan moved to New York and established his first business Tegu Incorporated The Venture was an early adte play advertisers could purchase inventory to get their messages displayed on TVs in all sorts of locations mainly apartments and hotel rooms owners of hot tourist spots could beam their offers to over 44,000 hotel rooms in the greater Manhattan area this was huge for the time from this business he began to build a framework around the flow of information the ability to
pipe in video content from one place to another is extremely valuable this idea would become the theme of Chuck Dolan's career and make him billions in the process in the mid 1960s Chuck took this framework and applied it to a new business venture but in a more conventional fashion he founded a cable network called Sterling Manhattan cable this was just your typical cable system with no bells and whistles but it gave Chuck an important foothold into a fast-moving industry with lots of opportunities opportunities like underground cable in September of 1966 Sterling Information Services Chuck's holding
company partnered with Time Life Incorporated to found Manhattan cable TV service the first underground cable system for the United States for any cable service today underground cable is the bread and bu of the business but at the time this was a groundbreaking Innovation born from regulatory issues prior to this television was delivered via telephone wire and the reception was usually unreliable especially in Manhattan with its massive skyscrapers by putting the cable underground Chuck was able to effectively deliver service to almost any business or home in Manhattan but there were two massive issues with this plan
one putting Cable in the ground was insanely expensive and two customers were really slow to adopt the product due to how new and unproven cable was at the time with dwindling revenue and massive Capital expenditures Chuck needed to make a dramatic change so in 1969 he merged with time International to give them more of a stake in Sterling Information Services that covered the capex to build the underground wires so what did Chuck do about the low demand he came up with an idea for a TV channel available to Cable subscribers only building a sense of
exclusivity and value around cable he initially called it the green Channel and they aired movies and sports without commercial Interruption what was one once the green channel is now HBO you can thank Chuck Dolan for succession but we'll get to that later HBO was a standout success the channel saved the network and push new subscribers to embrace cable but not everyone was a fan of the service you have to understand the time it was the 1970s and while Paid Television had been attempted before this was the first successful iteration as long as you had a
TV and an antenna you could access all the major broadcast networks for free so why would you pay for TV new problems began to emerge on the horizon for first came The Regulators these bureaucrats worried about where they were digging what they were building and all the downstream dangers associated with these projects the FCC had to make sure everything was up to Snuff and wound up clogging up every move Chuck Dolan tried to make then there was also serious competition from major networks all this work became a little too much for Chuck so he decided
to take a step back and start a new cable company cable vision he sold both HBO and sterling cable Manhattan to Time Life to fund his new operation and put his no knows to the grindstone by this point in Chuck Dolan's story he's learned the ins and outs of the cable and media business and so he sets his eyes on a new Target controlling all of Manhattan's cable Chuck is one of three applicants to be awarded cable franchise permits by the city of New York and effectively has the rights to the island he controls the
sale of cable in every corner of every burrow and begins to build a big bank roll in 2014 their finances were leaked and they were making around $6 billion do in Revenue 1 billion in operating income and 3 million in net income while these numbers are far behind the scale of what they were making back then cable vision was an insanely lucrative operation and became the family's piggy bank they bought everything from mansions and Yachts to Madison Square Garden and the two teams that play Within the arena the National Hockey League's New York Rangers and
the National Basketball association's New York Knicks who we'll get to in a second and here's where we get to Chuck Sun James Dolan the guy who actually built the Las Vegas sphere with lots of money from day one James grew up with with odd incentives when you have everything handed to you on a silver platter what else is there to do what gives you Purpose with all this Leisure Time James became an expert sailor throughout his youth he would take these massive excursions at one point taking a 70ft 12-man sailboat from Cape Town South Africa
to Rio De Janeiro Brazil James was a master of sailing and became deeply embedded within sailing culture and by extension drinking he attests that he never drank while actually sailing but his onland Antics were enough to raise some eyebrows James would frequent the yacht clubs and get torn up as James put it in his own words the whole sailboat SL yacht racing culture was around alcohol you go out on the boat and you come back and get trashed at the yacht club with your pink pants and eyes OD shirt eventually James drinking habit became such
an issue he had to check himself into a rehab center in 1993 he's been sober ever since and this is a personal point of Pride for him aside from sailing Dolan had a deep interest in music After High School James pursued a career in professional music but eventually called it quits and enrolled in college to get a communications degree from there he began to learn the inner workings of the family business through sales positions and eventually an assignment to launch a sports radio station in Cleveland Ohio James got a crash course on everything cable vision
and began getting involved in the fight for the family business if you remember earlier the media always depicted James as some snobby rich kid while that doesn't seem that far from the truth he did have a chip on his shoulder and a fire in his belly he wanted to prove himself show everyone that he had solid business Acumen [Music] too 3 2 1 happy New Year in 2003 satellite TV was all the rage shows like American Idol Survivor and Friends ruled the airwaves and there were tons of new companies looking to make Bank on a
better delivery system than cable Market entrance like Direct TV and Dish had popped up in '94 and 96 respectively and were eating up slices of the pie his dad Chuck noticed this and started investing heavily into satellites under a new project called Voom James didn't buy the hype though and thought it would be better to invest in actual entertainment it drove a rift between James and his brother Tom who was being groomed to inherit the business and had been embracing satellite to appease his father they would argue round and round about this topic it all
came to a head during meeting with the board of directors at a restaurant in New York City tempers flare the atmosphere is tense and the question on everyone's mind is who is to take the lead it's basically an episode of succession after the dust settles the board made their decision and sided with Tom and the satellite TV strategy Voom is funded and progress is underway rocket launches infrastructure The Works billions of dollars spent and in the end it all fails the internet proved to be a bigger opportunity and Voom was doomed from the start the
project loses $600 million in a single year and gets shuttered in 2005 they sell what remains of the division to echostar Communications Dish's parent company for $200 million while disastrous for the company as a whole this utter failure puts James in a new light he's not just some rich kid he's a rich kid with wit this new light emboldens him to take bigger swings and James begins to dive into entertainment now remember how I said the family purchased Madison Square Garden this becomes James Dolan's pet project if you don't know MSG is much more than
a single physical building MSG entertainment is a parent company that owns a ton of stuff Radio City Music Hall the New York Rangers NHL team the New York Knicks a bunch of radio and TV networks and James Dolan's personal Obsession the Rockets well you may know the Rockets from the 5 minutes they have on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade every year they're much more than just a song and dance team they're actually an incredibly sophisticated and vertically integrated business that anyone can take notes on every year the Rockets Christmas Spectacular entertains 1 million people over
the course of 7 weeks given the James Dolan owns the Music Hall and the group he's able to retain more of the profit this type of thinking around owning the Act and the venue also influences his sports management strategy the only difference is that sports management is a bit more complicated also everyone in the sports world hates James Dolan like they really hate him I'm so done with James Dolan who's just a child sell the team you think I should te you know what enjoy watching them on TV James no one is having fun at
the Garden except the fan who went over to you to say sell the team is not a one-dimensional person the way he's Port portrayed often in that he's a complicated guy as owner of the Knicks James has made many errors one prominent example is the Lin sanity Saga let's jump to 2013 the Knicks are riding high after trying Jeremy Lynn on for size it was a match made in heaven while off to a rocky start with very little playing time Lynn eventually came into his own and was performing like an All-Star for New York Lynn
secured his title as a real threat on the court by scoring 38 points against Kobe Bryant's Lakers the Lin sanity era had started Jeremy Lynn was the biggest story in basketball he was a couch surfing Harvard grad turned basketball phenom basically overnight it's a total if you can make it here you can make it anywhere type of Story New Yorkers loved him kids loved him everyone loved him the Knicks had finally secured a player they could build a lasting Dynasty around so what does James Dolan do he does sign him fans are pissed and for
good reason it looks like James just doesn't know what he's doing since the late 1990s the Knicks have had over a dozen coaches and constant leadership changes in the past 15 years the Knicks have had only three playoff appearances pretty horrific once you realize they have the highest payroll in the entire league the Knicks are constantly in controversy with former players being arrested and James kicking out fans for chanting sell the team with this much bad PR it feels like James is asleep at the wheel with his interest lying elsewhere to him Sports is just
a business his true passion is in music as he said in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen in 2013 I don't shoot basketballs I don't shoot pucks I don't install cable in people's homes music is a place that goes from my mind to my hands and into my voice directly so it's no secret Dolan is a big music fan while his earlier foray into playing professionally never panned out in 2005 he started a new band named JD in the straight shot even though the band isn't massive they've had a surprisingly successful run opening for bands
like the eagles the Almond Brothers Band and zezy top while from the outside it might seem like just a small pet project for James he takes it extremely seriously with a style that's a little bit country and a little bit rock and roll JD uses the band as a means of venting about his life a large portion of the band's discography is an open diary for Dolan where he writes about what's troubling him in his day-to-day life take this song I should have known the lyrics are haunting here's a sample I should have known I
should have known I should have thrown myself across his tracks stopped him from these VI attacks I have known if you couldn't pick up the subtext the song is about his close friendship with Harvey Weinstein the producer turned sex offender this passion for music has driven James Dolan to do many things and I personally believe it's why he decided to build the sphere the ultimate Performing Arts venue it's the glittering new addition to the Las Vegas Skyline built for a reported $2.3 billion at 366 ft tall 516 ft wide it's the world's largest spherical structure
that's been called virtual reality without the headsets while James has had a lot of things given to him based on his last name the sphere is uniquely him James could have just sat around for the rest of his life and collected checks from the Dolan family Empire but he's not he's taking a lot of risks to build something amazing and I think that he should be applauded for but what makes the sphere unique exactly well at first glance it looks like a giant LED ball the engineering and development behind it are much more than meets
the eye the sphere is a technological Marvel with 700,000 programmable video screens the sphere is the largest LED structure ever built it initially just started as a sketch on a napkin but now it's complete with 19,000 seats 167,000 speakers a structure that's 10 stories high and a calendar boasting over 600 events the finished product is the most advanced entertainment venue in the world after we finished construction all that was left was to outfit the sphere with the best entertainment enter You2 in Fall of 2021 the band was approached to open the $2.3 billion Mega structure
at first they thought it was going to flop their own creative director since the 80s Willie Williams thought it was a terrible idea you had done massive Stadium tours before but nothing on this scale if they were going to launch this structure they were going to need to dive in deep which is why they opted for a full-on residency at the sphere rather than just a single show while this was a risky bet it paid off in full with the help of viral clips and constant media Buzz The Residency is projected to pull in around
$270 million over 18 dates while that's a significant amount of money it's nowhere near the amount necessary to get in the green after all the massive Capital expenditures Dolan had to take a page out of the teleg guide Playbook and opt for advertising dollars when you have the most eye-catching structure in the world you get to name your price to advertise for just one day on the sphere you have to Fork over $450,000 this covers working with msg's 300 plus designers and is estimated to bring in 4.7 million daily Impressions across inperson and social media
views some products are perfect for advertising on the sphere basically if you sell a spherical product like something related to tennis basketball Etc it's going to go viral this extra monetization angle is critical to making the extremely expensive investment in building the sphere pay off while what you're personally working on may not be as large as the sphere there are still actionable lessons from the Dolan family that you can bring into your own life and business number one the Monopoly thesis there are many ways to build Monopoly you can have proprietary technology Elite branding Network
effects economies of scale or regulatory capture after Chuck Dolan sold off Sterling information to Time Warner he was given a golden opportunity to be the only cable provider in New York and Long Island he chose the path of regulatory capture understanding its power from his tie-ups at Sterling this lesson extends to the sphere the sphere is a combination of proprietary technology and Elite branding right now there's nothing else like it in the world until there is James Dolan has the biggest attention grabber in the world building a direct copy would feel like a knockoff and
in a world of unlimited online content people are starting to pay more for real world experiences which are by definition scarce number two vertical integration captures untapped value the rockats and Radio City Music Hall have a beautiful Synergy since the Dolan own both they are able to capture even more value than if the Rockets were a touring group James is already building this into his strategy for the sphere by developing custom content that he fully owns that that can play in the sphere forever number three never bet against someone with a chip on their shoulder
James has always had a reluctance to speak to the media they smear him call him a rich kid and talk on and on about his inherited wealth while any other silver spooned brat would slink off to the French Alps and spend the rest of their life in obscurity James took this hate and turned it into fuel to Envision and pull off the sphere is a massive feat I'd hate to be competing with him if after learning all this about James Dolan you have mixed feelings about him I don't blame you it's easy to see him
as pompous aggressive and petulant you might be right but there's one thing that's objectively true James had a bold and original idea for how entertainment should be experienced and chased it down to make it come true he built a massively ambitious structure that captured the world's attention and he did it extremely quickly it's felt impossible to build new things in the real world for decades now and even though the sphere is basically just a concert venue it's a step in the right direction thanks for watching
