U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere

The Sphere was announced in February 2018[1][2] as a joint project between the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) and Las Vegas Sands Corporation.[3] The venue was marketed for its potential to immerse audiences with revolutionary sound and video capabilities.[2] Measuring 366 feet (112 m) high and 516 feet (157 m) wide at its broadest point,[4] the Sphere is located east of Las Vegas Sands' Venetian resort, just off the Las Vegas Strip.[2] Groundbreaking on the venue took place in September 2018 with expectations that it would open in 2021.[5] In March 2020, MSG Entertainment announced that construction was being halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[6] By August, the company said that construction had resumed and that the Sphere's opening had been rescheduled until 2023.[7][8]

The idea to stage concerts for the 30th anniversary of U2's 1991 album Achtung Baby first emerged in 2021 as the band wondered if they should commemorate the milestone in some way during the pandemic. The group also considered the possibility of following the same model as their 2017 and 2019 concert tours that commemorated the 30th anniversary of their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. For bassist Adam Clayton, their biggest question was how potential anniversary concerts could possibly build upon their 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour that supported Achtung Baby. He said, "how do you update the Zoo TV concept? Because all the predictions of Zoo TV have come to pass: fake news, media overload, the MTV generation, wars fought on television with camera systems that could follow a missile down the street, as it was in the Iraq-Kuwait war at that time. So we just thought: we can't take this out [on the road]."[9]

U2's residency at Sphere comprises their first performances since the Joshua Tree Tour 2019 (pictured). Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. (right) will not participate in order to recuperate from surgery.

U2 guitarist the Edge said that the band first heard about the Sphere around 2021, as they were interested in staying informed about emerging technologies for concerts, particularly live audio.[10] Concert promoter Peter Shapiro, who was a producer for the band's concert film U2 3D, first approached lead vocalist Bono in autumn 2021 with the idea of the group opening the venue.[11] Interest in a potential show that would commemorate Achtung Baby coalesced around the idea of not touring a complex concert production in the post-COVID era.[12] Negotiations subsequently began in earnest early in 2022.[11]

MSG Entertainment chief executive James L. Dolan is reportedly paying the band US$10 million for the concert residency,[13] on top of the 90 percent guaranteed proceeds they are set to earn from each concert.[14] The band is also reportedly guaranteed $4 million per show from Live Nation.[15] Entertainment executive Irving Azoff, who helped Dolan secure the plot of land on which the Sphere was built, agreed to take U2 on a talent management client in 2022,[11] taking over for Guy Oseary after a nine-year tenure as the band's manager.[16]

In November 2022, Larry Mullen Jr. said that he needed surgery to continue performing, as he had "lots of bits falling off, elbows, knees, neck". He said that if U2 performed in 2023, it would likely be without him.[17] Mullen's physical issues had not surfaced until after the band had agreed to the concerts,[11] by which point they could not reschedule; the Edge said, "We made a commitment."[18] Azoff said the band has an option to continue performing at the Sphere for two more years.[11]

In early 2022, Bono presented the idea for a U2 residency at the Sphere to their longtime production designer Willie Williams;[19] initially, Williams thought "it was a terrible idea".[11] Personally, the vibe of Las Vegas was not appealing to him, as he called it; "very dark. And, these days, increasingly cynical. It seems people come here because they've seen it on Instagram. When Vegas was cheap, it was one thing. But now Vegas is really expensive."[9] From a practical perspective, he was also skeptical about tailoring a U2 show to a specific venue with new technical requirements. In his prior experiences with the band, the creative team always started with ideas before selecting the equipment that could help them realise their ideas; for the Sphere, he found it odd that they would need to take the reverse approach by starting with an unfinished venue and its hardware as the only givens.[11]

Williams was also unsure whether the proposed show should reference the Zoo TV Tour, as he believed that its multimedia spectacle had become ubiquitous over the following 30 years. He said: "The Zoo TV video confessional basically is TikTok. So I felt like that language has probably played out. Every show out there looks like a cross between Zoo TV and [U2's 1997 tour] PopMart... and I wasn't sure there was much more water in that well." Ultimately, he changed his mind after deciding that he could focus on certain visual elements from the Zoo TV Tour that had not been as heavily replicated and that he would aspire to recreate the overall atmosphere of the tour.[11] Williams also came to recognise the proposed Sphere concerts as an opportunity to "present something that is genuinely joyful and light-filled" that people could respond to positively.[9]

To begin designing the show, Williams collaborated with stage designer and artist Es Devlin, who worked on the band's 2015 Innocence + Experience Tour, and Ric Lipson of the architectural firm Stufish. Williams said the band's creative team typically operated like a think tank and would first discuss ideas they had been thinking about since they last designed a show.[20] For the Sphere concerts, the trio began by trying to brainstorm a new type of show and its supporting visual concepts, all the while imagining the physical space of the venue in which the performances would take place.[20][12] They developed storyboards and held creative discussions over several months, during which they involved U2. Williams said he went to great lengths to explain to the band that they were "making an ocean liner not a dinghy", and that once they had decided on a direction, they would not be able to shift course quickly due to the production's heavy dependencies on video.[20] The creative team felt an extensive challenge in designing a show for a venue that had not yet been built. Williams likened the task to creating the "biggest art project in the history of our species whilst running a three-legged obstacle course".[12]

Williams said he wisely made the early decision to bring all the band's collaborators to Las Vegas, and that nearly his entire team relocated temporarily to the city.[12] Many crew members from prior U2 tours were involved in the production. Williams reunited lighting directors Alex Murphy and Ethan Weber, who previously worked together on U2's 360° Tour, and he added Matt Beecher, who served as lighting director on Bono's 2022–2023 "Stories of Surrender" book tour. For the video and camera direction, Williams engaged Allen Branton, Felix Peralta, and Stefan "Smasher" Desmedt; Williams previously worked with Desmedt and Branton on the 1993 filming of Zoo TV: Live from Sydney.[20] Longtime U2 producers Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite also served as advisers.[12]

Sphere under construction in September 2022

Clayton said that despite the band being presented with demos of the Sphere's immersive capabilities ahead of time, the creative team had eight months of pre-production work to complete before they would even have access to the venue.[12] Most demos that were conducted at the Sphere and its small-scale replica Sphere Studios in Burbank, California, were focused on high-resolution outdoor photography. However, after Williams realized that "even though the canvas is vast, very simple things can be very effective", he decided that U2's show should use more abstract imagery and that he would leave the nature photography to the Sphere's other opening feature, the Darren Aronofsky film Postcard from Earth.[11]

Williams's design agency Treatment Studio was tasked with producing all video content for the residency. While the majority of it was produced in-house, artists such as Devlin, Marco Brambilla, and John Gerrard were commissioned to contribute video based on existing works of theirs, although they had to be recreated for the Sphere's high-resolution screen.[12] Devlin's sequence "Nevada Ark" is based on her 2022 art installation "Come Home Again" at Tate Modern, for which she drew 243 of London's endangered species. After seeing the piece, Bono contacted her and asked if she would adapt it for U2's residency in Nevada;[9] the result was a sequence featuring 26 of the state's endangered species. The visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic also produced a computer-generated recreation of the Las Vegas skyline.[21] Devlin said that the creative team approached the Sphere production like it was "a group art show".[12]

Williams's design agency Treatment Studio was tasked with producing all video content for the residency. While the majority of it was produced in-house, artists such as Devlin, Marco Brambilla, and John Gerrard were commissioned to contribute video based on existing works of theirs, although they had to be recreated for the Sphere's high-resolution screen.[12] Devlin's sequence "Nevada Ark" is based on her 2022 art installation Come Home Again at Tate Modern, for which she drew 243 of London's endangered species. After seeing the piece, Bono contacted her and asked if she would adapt it for U2's residency in Nevada;[9] the result was a sequence featuring 26 of the state's endangered species.[21] Brambilla spent three-and-a-half months creating the sequence "King Size" that features a kaleidoscopic collage of 1,000 looped video clips depicting Elvis Presley and various Las Vegas iconography.[22][23] Brambilla was asked to produce visuals that would instill sensory overload in the audience, and from conversations with Bono, he developed the themes of representing the death of Elvis, the birth of Las Vegas, and their parallels with the American Dream.[24] Brambilla trained the artificial intelligence model Stable Diffusion to categorise his personal library of over 12,000 film clips, many of them from Elvis's filmography.[25] He then used Stable Diffusion, along with the text-to-image models DALL-E and Midjourney, to create "fantastical exaggerations" of Elvis based on text prompts.[22][24] Pieces from Gerrard's "Flag" series, titled "Endling" and "Surrender", were produced for the residency.[26] The visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic produced a computer-generated recreation of the Las Vegas skyline for a sequence in which Bono wanted the LED screen to depict the exterior surroundings of the Sphere and create the illusion that the building had disappeared.[20][21][27] Devlin said that the creative team approached the Sphere production like it was "a group art show".[12]

The high resolution of the interior LED screen posed several challenges, the biggest of which was building a video playback system that was suitable for live concerts, according to Williams. The Sphere's in-house playback system, provided by 7thSense, was designed to display high-resolution films but not with a timeline-based interface that is typical in the concert touring industry. To solve this, Treatment's technical lead Brandon Kraemer collaborated with Desmedt and the firms Disguise and Fuse to create a custom system that could play pre-rendered video content (most of it created at a 12K resolution), integrate feeds from live cameras, and manipulate imagery, all in a manner more familiar to concert touring personnel. The show's high-resolution video requirements also meant that for some sequences, every frame of video was initially taking the video artists 15 minutes to render, according to Williams; Kraemer consequently worked with Desmedt, Disguise, and Fuse to design a viable workflow for the artists.[20]

The group's longtime sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy worked extensively to translate the "sonically dense" mixes of the Achtung Baby songs to the Sphere's unique sound system. Clayton felt that the group did not need to perform very loud due to the sound design, which in turn forced him to concentrate more on his bass playing to "lock in".[12]

Williams collaborated with Murphy to design the lighting system.[28] Williams said the Sphere's in-house lights were limited in usefulness, since they were mostly positioned along the balcony rails and thus could only "provide a flat front light or point at the screen". For designing a custom system, the team felt challenged to find a suitable location to place lights in the venue without resorting to hanging trusses that would obscure the LED screen.[20] Williams explored several solutions, such as scissor lifts, louvred screen panels and arches, before settling on four articulating "lampposts" that he and Lipson designed.[28][20] To maximise visibility of the screen, Williams wanted the posts to be as thin as possible. As a consequence, this reduced their weight carrying capacity, which he said resulted in the team "attempting to reinvent live entertainment with a sum total of twelve back lights".[20] The lighting team was onsite in Las Vegas about 50 days before the residency's first show in order to begin conducting their design review.[28]

According to Williams, it was not until February 2023 that the Edge felt the creative team had "cracked the code" for the show. The resulting theme running through it is the conflicting relationship that exists between consumerism and climate change; Clayton acknowledged the theme was subtle and said the artists had created a narrative embodying "the idea of community" and that people were equally part of the problem and the solution.[12] Williams ultimately spent 18 months conceptualising the U2:UV Achtung Baby show.[29]

The Edge told Variety in April 2023 that the group had begun rehearsing with Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg, Mullen's replacement for the residency.[30] The band rehearsed in Dublin and Monaco,[31] and then arrived to the Sphere with their crew on 5 September to begin on-site run-throughs of the show.[32] During rehearsals, Williams directed the band on how adjust their performance for the new space, saying: "They have to learn a new physicality. I keep saying to them, 'look up!', because it's an amphitheatre and a lot of the audience are up high. It's much, much more contained."[9]

The Sphere's interior LED screen measures 160,000 square feet and has a 16K resolution.

Concerts for U2:UV Achtung Baby are leveraging the Sphere's immersive video and sound capabilities. The venue is equipped with a 160,000-square-foot (15,000 m²) LED screen that wraps around the interior. Comprising 268,435,456 pixels at a 16,000 × 16,000 resolution, it is the highest-resolution LED screen in the world, according to Sphere Entertainment.[12][33][34][35][36] The screen is made of 64,000 video tiles[37] with a 8-millimetre (0.31 in) pixel pitch manufactured by SACO Technologies[38] in 780 different geometric shapes.[39] The building's exosphere features a 580,000-square-foot (54,000 m²) LED display,[40] the world's largest at the time the venue opened.[41] It comprises 1.2 million puck-shaped LEDs spaced eight inches apart, each containing 48 diodes.[42]

The Sphere's sound system, dubbed "Sphere Immersive Sound", features spatial audio capabilities.[43] It is based on Holoplot's X1 Matrix Array speaker model,[44] which uses beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies and has 96 drivers in each unit.[45][46] Using these technologies as well as software algorithms, the system can deliver a consistent listening experience to every seat in the venue.[47] The sound system comprises 1,586 permanently installed speakers and 300 mobile modules, with 99 percent of the system being hidden behind the LED screen;[48] in total, it comprises 167,000 speaker drivers, amplifiers, and processing channels, and it weighs 395,120 pounds (179,220 kg).[45] The location in the Sphere where a traditional theatre proscenium would be built features the world's largest loudspeaker array comprising 464 cabinets.[47] Sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy decided to focus the sound image of the band's performances towards this area, only occasionally panning guitar or effects to the left or right sides of the audience.[49]

The stage is shaped like a record player and features LED panels in the floor.

The stage for the residency was designed by Ric Lipson of Stufish[9] and built by Tait.[38] It is shaped like a record player, borrowing its design from the art piece "Turntable", a functional record player designed by Brian Eno. Williams said the idea to replicate the design of "Turntable" began as a joke until the creative team "quickly realised it would be brilliant".[12] The square stage measures 46 feet (14 m) wide and features a raised circular platter in the center with a 30-foot (9.1 m) diameter. The stage is 6 feet (1.8 m) high in the front and has a two-degree rake to rise to 7.5 feet (2.3 m) in the back.[38] Lipson called it U2's most intimate stage in decades and said that it was deliberately designed without any catwalks so the band members would be limited in how far they could move away from the main performance area. Describing the placement of a minimalist stage within the high amphitheatre layout of the Sphere, Lipson said: "It feels like you're in a stadium but with the scale of a club."[9] The surface of the stage is covered with 1,038 Yes Tech MG7S curved LED video tiles with a 3.9-millimetre (0.15 in) pixel pitch that were provided by Fuse;[38][50][51] using the LED tiles, the stage can be lit by an ever-changing cycle of "colourscapes" that are generated by the same algorithm used for Eno's "Turntable".[12][52]

The lighting system uses four articulating "lampposts" behind the stage.

The Sphere has approximately 150 in-house light fixtures positioned mostly along the balcony rails and behind the LED screen; the ones behind the screen are used for only two or three cues during U2's shows.[28][20] A custom lighting system was designed by U2's team to supplement the Sphere's in-house one. Four articulating lighting cranes described by Williams as "lampposts" are positioned behind the stage,[20] each equipped with two Robe Forte profile lights and a Robe Forte FS followspot.[53] The height of the lampposts can be controlled from the lighting console,[28] allowing them to be lowered for cleaner sightlines of the LED screen at certain parts of the show.[20] Williams said that the lampposts' chrome finish also helps them "disappear into the video picture".[20] The floor along the stage features 15 HungaroFLASH Quasar Strobes, which Murphy liked for the appearance of their filaments cooling down after flashing.[28][54] The lights used for the show include: 24 Robe Forte and 24 Robe Forte FS fixtures; 25 Wildfire VioStorm VS-120 UV lights; 119 GLP JDC1 and 30 GLP XDC1 strobe lights; 60 Chauvet Strike 1 blinder lights; 36 Astera Hydra Panel units with wireless controllers; and 6 Astera AX2 PixelBar (50 cm) units.[54] Murphy said that the crew operated lighting consoles from several locations in the venue, which included three grandMA2 Full units and two grandMA2 Lite units by MA Lighting, and that the team were "jumping in and out of the house system".[28][54]

The Sphere contains multi-sensory 4D features such as scent and wind, along with haptic technology in 10,000 seats.[55] U2:UV Achtung Baby, however, is not utilising them; Williams said of the building's aromatic capabilities, "I wouldn't give that idea to a bunch of Irish guys".[9]

U2's team employed the company WEKA as their official technology partner for the production of the concerts. Desmedt, the band's technical and video director, said that the firm's storage server solutions helped them process the 200–300 gigabytes of video data per minute that was required for the concerts. WEKA's Data Platform was used to migrate 500 terabytes of archival video footage from the United Kingdom where it was rendered to a local cluster of WEKA servers at the Sphere over cloud servers.[56]

In July 2022, Billboard first reported that U2 had entered into an agreement to perform a concert residency in the Las Vegas Valley at the Sphere for the venue's planned opening in 2023.[57] During a November 2022 interview with Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ One, Bono addressed the residency rumours, saying: "I can't announce Vegas, you'd have to shoot me. But if it happens, I can promise you it won't be like anything you've ever seen in Las Vegas or anywhere ever. It is the most extraordinary... If it comes off, it's grand madness by 100." Bono also said the shows would centre around Achtung Baby, which he thought they "need[ed] to really honour".[58]

A promotional image with the residency's branding that was used until August 2023

The concerts remained unconfirmed until 12 February 2023, when a Super Bowl LVII television advertisement aired to officially announce the engagement as "U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere".[59] In the advertisement, an unidentified flying object is seen hovering over several cities, which is revealed to contain a disembodied baby, and U2 fans are mysteriously transported into the desert. Journalists found the advertisement to be eerily topical, as the preceding weeks and days were marked by sightings of several unknown aerial objects.[60][61][62]

U2 members the Edge, Bono, and Adam Clayton during the opening concert of the residency

The announcement confirmed that the concerts would be focused on Achtung Baby, and that Mullen would not participate in order to allow him to recuperate from surgery.[59] The residency marks the first time since 1978 that U2 is performing without him;[63] Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg from the band Krezip is filling in. In a joint statement, Bono, the Edge, and Clayton said, "It's going to take all we've got to approach the Sphere without our bandmate in the drum seat, but Larry has joined us in welcoming Bram van den Berg who is a force in his own right." The statement also said, "We're the right band, 'Achtung Baby' the right album, and the Sphere the right venue to take the live experience of music to the next level".[59] According to journalist Neil McCormick, who has had a longtime association with U2, the announcement drew criticism from many of the group's most devoted fans. Some felt the band were being hypocritical by agreeing to perform in a city whose values did not align with the band's "image of idealism and activism", while others were "up in arms" that Mullen, a founding member of the group, would be absent.[64]

Various media outlets called "U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere" a "residency", though the band have referred to it as a "venue launch" instead;[65] the Pollstar Awards have defined a residency as a run of 10 or more shows at a single venue.[66] The Edge said that he did not view it as a traditional concert residency, due to the Sphere's availability limiting the amount of possible shows and because he viewed the band's motives for agreeing to the performances as creative ones. He acknowledged that Las Vegas residencies tended to be negatively perceived by some as "very show-biz", and countered that for U2: "it's the venue and it's the technology that is really the catch for us, and the hook. Because when we found out about what this venue was really offering us creatively, we just were completely intrigued. And the more we found out, we kind of saw it as a throwdown... as a challenge."[30]

Concert dates and ticket sale details for U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere were announced on 24 April 2023. Initially, five dates from 29 September 2023 to 8 October 2023 were announced.[67] Subscribers of U2.com were offered the first opportunity to submit ticket requests via Ticketmaster Request, with a deadline of 26 April.[68] An additional presale was announced for 27 April; to participate, fans were required to register on Ticketmaster's Verified Fan platform by 26 April and then be selected. The retailer planned to hold a general public sale starting 28 April to offer any tickets remaining from the presales.[30]

After a million ticket requests were submitted within the first day, on 25 April it was announced that seven concerts had been added from 11 to 25 October.[68] Two days later, another five concerts were announced, spanning 27 October to 4 November;[69] the announcement confirmed that only fans who had already registered on the Verified Fan platform would be eligible to participate in the presale for the newly added shows.[70] Ultimately, presale demand for tickets was so high, Ticketmaster announced that no general public sale would take place.[71][72] On 12 May, eight shows were added from 1 to 16 December, bringing the residency's length at that point to 25 concerts in 2023.[73] Hotel packages and VIP upgrades for the concerts were sold through the hospitality firm Vibee.[74]

A view of the seating levels and wraparound LED screen of the Sphere, as seen from the general admission area. The overhang of the second level obscures the view of the screen for some lower-level seats.

Representatives for the Sphere and U2 announced that 60 percent of tickets would be available for less than $300. At the time tickets were first offered for sale, prices ranged from $140 (for upper-level seats) to $500 (for lower-level seats), all-inclusive figures that already accounted for fees. Additionally, tickets for the "Red Zone", an elevated VIP section, were first offered for $600 and were limited to 50 per show; proceeds from the VIP tickets will benefit (RED), the organization co-founded by Bono to fight HIV/AIDS.[75][76] Initially, the average ticket price was around $390.[39] Rather than prices being static, dynamic pricing allowed them to fluctuate as demand changed.[75] Within a week of tickets going on sale, seats that originally cost $140 were listed for $1,250, while the VIP tickets had increased from $600 to $6,000.[71] During the week before the residency began, The New York Times said that prices "recently ranged from $268 to $1,240" but noted that tickets for opening night were still available from Live Nation four days beforehand and that resellers had listings for tickets below face value.[77]

Hundreds of people who bought tickets in the Sphere's premium, lower-level 100 section were informed that their seats had obstructed views of the wraparound screen due to the overhang of the second level. Approximately 800 of the venue's 17,500 seats are affected.[78] The concert organisers offered refunds to impacted ticketholders, along with access to a presale for the December shows for seats with unobstructed views.[79]

On 19 October 2023, the band announced that U2:UV Achtung Baby would be extended with 11 additional concerts running from 26 January to 18 February 2024; the extension brings the residency's total number of shows to 36. A presale for U2.com subscribers began the same day as the announcement, and a general public sale followed on 25 October.[80]

The opening act for the concerts is UK-based drummer and multi-instrumentalist Pauli "the PSM" Lovejoy.[81] During the pre-show, they DJ music from inside a neon Trabant that moves around the general admission area.[82][83]

Set list

Bono in the opening show of the residency. During shows, he reprises his Fly character from the Zoo TV Tour.

The following set list was performed on 29 September 2023 for the residency's opening show:[84]

Achtung Baby Part 1

1. "Zoo Station"
2. "The Fly"
3. "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
4. "Mysterious Ways"
5. "One" (lyrical snippets of "Purple Rain" and "Love Me Tender")
6. "Until the End of the World"
7. "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
8. "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"

Rattle and Hum Interlude

9. "All I Want Is You"
10. "Desire" (with lyrical snippet of "Love Me Do")
11. "Angel of Harlem" (with lyrical snippets of "Into the Mystic" and "Dancing in the Moonlight")
12. "Love Rescue Me"

Achtung Baby Part 2

13. "So Cruel"
14. "Acrobat"
15. "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)"
16. "Love Is Blindness"

Encore

17. "Elevation" (with lyrical snippet of "My Way")
18. "Atomic City"
19. "Vertigo"
20. "Where the Streets Have No Name"
21. "With or Without You"
22. "Beautiful Day" (with lyrical snippets of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" and "Blackbird")

The 25 October performance included a cover of "Shallow" with Lady Gaga, alongside U2 tunes "All I Want Is You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".[85]

In the time leading up to the residency, Apple Music posted several promotional videos of interviews conducted by music presenter Zane Lowe with Bono and the Edge. On 21 April 2023, a video was released in which the trio toured the unfinished Sphere as well as the Neon Museum during a visit the month prior.[86] On 5 October, another video was released featuring a behind-the-scenes tour of the completed venue.[87]

The Sphere began promoting U2:UV Achtung Baby on 29 August 2023, a month prior to the first concert date, by displaying the residency branding on the exosphere's LED screen.[88]

The Plaza Hotel & Casino, where U2's video shoot for the Las Vegas-themed single "Atomic City" culminated

As a promotional tie-in to the residency, U2 issued a Las Vegas-themed single called "Atomic City". It was recorded at Sound City Studios in Los Angeles and produced by Jacknife Lee and Steve Lillywhite.[89] The band began filming a music video for the song in Las Vegas on 16 September. With them set up on a moving flatbed truck, the shoot began at the 3rd Street Stage on Fremont Street and culminated at midnight at the Carousel Bar in front of the Plaza Hotel & Casino, where the group were met by a crowd that included 250 extras. In addition to several takes of "Atomic City", U2 performed "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", whose music video had been filmed on Fremont Street in 1987. Mullen participated in the video shoot, despite his plans to be absent from the concert residency.[90] The single was released digitally on 29 September, and will also be released on limited-edition CD and 7-inch vinyl formats.[89]

On 28 September, an exhibit called "Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience" opened in the Venetian resort, comprising 12,000 square feet (1,100 m²) of space across two floors to feature memorabilia and interactive displays related to U2.[91] Created by Vibee in collaboration with the group's longtime creative director Gavin Friday,[92] the exhibit features: a gallery of photography and video taken by the band's photographer Anton Corbijn; a pop-up shop of merchandise; Zoo TV Cinema, a theatre screening five films curated by the Edge;[91] a life-size German subway train; and a vintage Trabant automobile.[92] According to Vibee vice president Harvey Cohen, more than 15,000 people visited the exhibit on the residency's opening weekend.[93]

U2 following a 7 October 2023 performance. Temporary drummer Bram van den Berg is on the right.

The inaugural Sphere show received wide critical acclaim, with many reviews highlighting the successful fusion of U2's anthemic music with the grandiosity of the venue itself.[94] Katie Atkinson of Billboard said, "Sphere never overshadows U2; Sphere magnifies U2, pairing a band that has attempted to innovate with each new tour over their 40-plus-year career with a venue that seemingly has no limits of innovation."[92] Neil McCormick of The Telegraph said the concert was "genuinely astonishing" and had "the best visuals and sound you have ever seen and heard", and he thought the band used the venue's technology with a "surprising degree of restraint". McCormick concluded his review saying, "What U2 are doing in the Sphere is going to have an impact on the whole of live entertainment".[95] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised the group's performance for retaining spontaneity and rough edges amidst the high-tech production, saying, "This cocktail of eye-popping visuals and slightly unruly performances absolutely works, allaying any concerns that a band from the post-punk era and the old showbiz connotations of a residency in Las Vegas constitute a slightly uncomfortable fit".[96] Melissa Ruggieri of USA Today called the band's performance "a marvel" that featured "many memorable visual stunners"; she ended her review by saying: "It's fair to wonder if such a gargantuan production eclipses a band. Not this one. Especially since some of the most moving moments were in the small details and the inherent earnestness of U2's music."[97]

Andy Greene of Rolling Stone said the Sphere had "somehow managed to live up to years of hype", adding that "By any measurement, it was a stunning success." He could not "imagine a better proof of concept for Sphere than this U2 show", calling it "a quantum leap forward for concerts."[82] Chris Willman of Variety praised the band's creative and production teams for both the impressive visuals and clear sound as well as the minimalism of the stage design. He found the show to be "the apotheosis of a bigger-is-better ethos" the band has followed throughout their career, saying, "It's a cliche to say that U2 can achieve intimacy in the midst of the most ridiculous extravaganza, but nobody in rock history has done a better job of taking visual and aesthetic dynamics to extremes."[98] Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times said the show's "production sets a new benchmark for the interplay between humans and technology" and that U2 offered "the sheer obliterating pleasure of sensory overload: a barrage of eye-popping sights and sharply rendered sounds that finds a kind of ecstasy in submission". While he believed U2 risked succumbing to irrelevancy by focusing on an album from their back catalogue, he posited that Achtung Baby may be "just a delivery device, in a post-pandemic age when live music feels more important than it has in decades, for a new way to think about performance".[99] Writing for the Irish Independent, Barry Egan said it may have been one of U2's best and most emotional performances, despite how weird he felt seeing them with a different drummer. In spite of Mullen's absence and the stigma of performing in Las Vegas, Egan felt the band had "proved that any theories of them damaging their reputation were wrong in so many ways".[100]

Brad Auerbach of Spin praised the Sphere saying: "The sound was fantastic. The video presentation was truly incomparable. It is doubtful any venue on this planet can match either aspect." Reviewing the performance, he said, "The anticipation of the crowd overcame some trepidation emanating from the band; the four lads seemed a bit uneven, almost by their own admission."[93] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times said that "for all the vividness of the setting, there was still something not quite complete about this performance, which at times was winningly small, at others winningly huge, and at still others a futile ramble". He found many of the visuals to be too cluttered and disorienting, and he judged that the setlist had too many "peaks and valleys" and was impacted by tentative performances. Caramanica said that at times the space between the band, the screen, and the crowd "paralleled the airy emptiness of a corporate convention gig".[101]

On the Monday following U2's opening-weekend shows, the stock price of Sphere Entertainment Co. rose, peaking at a 17.3 percent increase before finishing the day up 11.1 percent. This increased the company's market capitalization by $143.2 million, bringing it to a $1.43 billion valuation.[102]

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