UFC 306 to feature on-screen ‘worlds’ at Sphere

Sphere’s massive interior LED screen will be used extensively during UFC 306 to showcase Mexican culture before fights and transformed into different “worlds” during fights on the Sept. 14 card.

Dubbed Riyadh Season Noche UFC, the Mexican Independence Day card is headlined by a bantamweight title fight between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili. The card features seven Mexican fighters in the first live sporting event at Sphere.

Sphere’s 160,000-square-foot interior LED screen will serve as the backdrop of the octagon, which the UFC will use for storytelling elements and fights.

“Throughout the night we are going to be running six 90-second films that will tell the story of the Mexican people, their culture, their heritage and their fighting spirit,” UFC chief content officer Craig Borsari said. “After these 90-second films run, it (the screen) will then transition into what we are calling these digital worlds. The world will sit there during the fights, and the fights will be integrated into those digital environments.”

Throughout the card, Sphere’s interior screen will be in use nonstop, aimed at the fans in attendance and those who purchased the pay-per-view, Borsari said. Massive screen aside, Sphere is also unique as it doesn’t feature a traditional 360-degree seating bowl that standard arenas do.

“The way they engineered the building gives you an incredible view of the octagon (in person),” Borsari said. “The unique aspect is that you have the 180-degree span of the building, and the fans are all on that one side. To be able to maximize the grandeur and the volume in which the event is taking place, we’ve installed a whole separate set of cameras that will be capturing the atmosphere within the Sphere and not just the fight action — to allow the viewer at home to experience as close to what it would be like to be seated in the 200 level or 300 level and watching the fight.”

Feel a knockout at your seat

Sphere’s sophisticated sound and seat elements will also come into play for fans in attendance.

UFC will use Sphere’s directional audio to ensure the best possible sound during the films and the environments shown on the screen during fights. Sphere’s haptic seating technology also will be used, which will move or shake select seats in response to sounds during films and fights.

“Another piece of technology we’re tapping into in the venue is the haptic feedback within about 10,000 of the seats inside Sphere,” Borsari said. “There will be elements that we run within the films or moments within the films where haptic feedback will be utilized. During fight action, if there’s a big slam or knockout, you will certainly feel that at your seat.”

Lighting challenge

One of the UFC’s biggest challenges was to figure out how to light the octagon without impeding the crowd’s view.

At a typical arena, the lighting grid is center-hung just beneath a facility’s jumbotron, about 32 feet above the octagon. The rigs include lighting, microphones and robotic cameras. With that setup not possible at Sphere, UFC’s production staff had to think outside the box.

“If we had a big lighting rig 32 feet above our octagon, there would be a massive visual obstruction for everybody seated on the theater side of the building,” Borsari said. “It took months of some really talented engineers to figure out how to exactly light the octagon. We did come up with a system where we are going to light the octagon from behind the LED media plane. We’ll blow light in between gaps in the LED nodes, which will allow us to do away with the visual obstruction of the lighting grid.”

‘Completely different animal’

For a standard UFC card at T-Mobile Arena, the heavy work begins about four weeks out with production elements. That leads up to event week, where on-site rehearsals take place, often the day before the card.

For the Sphere event, the UFC began assembling a team of third-party groups and content creators as early as December. The team began working in the spring on creative elements that would run on fight night.

Then, about two months ago, the UFC took a deep dive into the format for UFC 306. Members of the production team have been at Sphere several times over the past few months working on their fight night plan.

“There is nothing that really replicates the scale and the technical execution of really being inside Sphere,” Borsari said. “We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time and will continue to spend time in there daily.”

Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.