There’s no bigger moment in sports than the Super Bowl. With all eyes on Las Vegas, hosting this year’s game for the first time in history, Sphere’s challenge was to provide a canvas and programming that would amplify the event and take it to a whole new level of viewership and engagement.

In partnership with the NFL and CBS Sports, Sphere programmed the Exosphere with stunning content including live game highlights, sports themed artist takeovers, the world’s biggest and fuzziest fan, and brand moments that activated the world like never before. With Sphere at the center of the Super Bowl buzz, it elevated Super Bowl LVIII to a whole new level, shattering viewership records in the process.

To elevate Super Bowl LVIII, Sphere Entertainment transformed the Exosphere into the world’s most dynamic canvas, beaming countdowns, game highlights, live score updates, and enlisting our original Sphere characters to become a central part of the Super Bowl experience. With stunning programming and live moments, the Exosphere cemented itself as a major centerpiece for one of the biggest moments in sports. Sphere amplified Super Bowl LVIII by capturing ‘The Pulse of the Game’ and providing a new canvas for sports and brands to activate fans globally, helping them experience the game in a whole new way.

To elevate this year’s Super Bowl to new heights, our task was twofold – excite the football fans travelling into Vegas, while also amplifying the game to the millions of spectators worldwide.

Our approach was to broadcast the Super Bowl LVIII experience beyond the stadium, turning Sphere into “The World’s Screen” to amplify the game experience. Sphere became the place where larger than life ideas played out, from football themed artist takeovers to activations that heightened the game, all on a 35-storey, volumetric, spherical screen.

We programmed the Exosphere to capture the “Pulse of the Game” and make America’s grandest sports stage even grander, giving fans on-ground a thrilling experience, while inviting fans around the world to join the spectacle via social. The Sphere Super Bowl Experience helped Super Bowl LVIII become one of the most exciting and watched of all time.

Planning for the event started with the NFL eight months prior, as the amount of creative development, R&D, and planning was a massive undertaking. We developed and produced over 73 original pieces of content to take over the Exosphere during the Super Bowl; all needing to be built for the Exosphere’s one-of-a-kind specs. Pieces had to be perfectly timed with key-beats of the event including the national anthem, the Thunderbirds F-16 flyover, and leveraging Exosphere as the world’s biggest instant replay screen showing key highlights from the game. The Exosphere captured the “Pulse of the Game”, enabling fans to see, feel and experience the Super Bowl like never before.

With the Super Bowl’s viewer ratings shattering previous US records we saw impressive metrics as our executions took over social leading up to and during the event:

BROADCAST STATS

Over 123,400,000 viewers tuned into the Super Bowl where they saw Sphere incorporated into the broadcast (over 40% of the American population).

SOCIAL STATS

- 34,148,306 Impressions (Over 10% of the American population)

- 30,340,148 Views

- 2,084,602 Engagements

- 11.8B+ Reach

- The Biggest TV Audience Since the Moon Landing

- Over 90 seconds of free Super Bowl broadcast coverage of Sphere

- Metrics showed that Sphere was instrumental in bringing those who would never watch the Super Bowl into the game.