Why The Sphere's Wizard of Oz Works: The 'Know They Love' Principle

The Wizard of Oz is the hit that Sphere Entertainment needed. It's time to revisit a few pieces I've written in the past year:

From August 2024:

" Sphere's concert residencies with U2 and others may capture most of the headlines, but the venue's core business is Experiences like Postcard from Earth, the 55-minute film made by Darren Aronofsky. Patrons pay $49 to $249 to attend the immersive show that runs several times per day and generated over $1 million in daily average ticket sales in the days it ran in Q2.

"The Events and Experiences model is like the Nike and Adidas approach to selling sneakers. The most sought-after products, like Air Jordans and Yeezys, were high-priced, in high demand, but in limited supply. To capture the remaining demand, the big sneaker companies create a cheaper, mass-produced line that looks enough like Jordans and Yeezys to fit in, but not enough to cause internal issues. They cost less to produce and often contribute more to the bottom line given the quantities sold."

First, my Air Jordan analogy above no longer works. Air Jordan's cheaper, mass-produced line, "Team Jordans," is a low-key great business for Nike (despite the haters), but they only work because of the success of the Jordans 1 through 23.

Meanwhile, The Wizard of Oz is a lucrative attraction and spectacle in itself, independent of any concert residency.

And here's what I wrote in July 2025:

"The venue now has The Wizard of Oz starting in August, with From The Edge, an extreme sports documentary, coming in 2026. This model could work well for recent movies that have done well on IMAX, but there's a big budget hurdle.

It cost $80 million to convert The Wizard of Oz for the Sphere. That $80 million is nearly half of Interstellar's 2014 production budget. Any film chosen needs to cast a wide, four-quadrant net to work—perhaps a much wider net than the Letterboxd enthusiast, Christopher Nolan cinephiles that might gravitate to IMAX releases."

The costs may be closer to $100 million, but either way, the product will make its money back and then some.

According to Wolfe Research via Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, The Wizard of Oz brings in 4,000 to 5,000 tickets per showing for around $200 per ticket. At two showings on weekdays and three showings on weekends, this film could easily clear $500 million in revenue in its first year, and likely more.

The Wizard of Oz tracks with the broader "immersive entertainment" experiences that have worked well in recent years.

COSM, the LA and Dallas-based sports entertainment venue, can charge very high prices for a sports bar experience because it's unique and next-level. The Wizard of Oz at Sphere can do the same in Vegas. Your local symphony can charge north of $100 to watch Jurassic Park with a live orchestra because people want the elevated experience for the thing they already know they love.

That's the secret: know they love. Fans have already bought into the underlying product. How do we elevate it and price it at an appropriate level for the enhanced experience? That's the sweet spot. That's what ABBA Voyage is. That's my long-lost The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill idea that I floated a few years ago. That's what aspects of the metaverse tried to capture before it got caught up in itself.

But oftentimes, the entertainment industry leans on proven IP, but creates new stories that they "hope" audiences love.

Sure, the fact that I'll pay $100 to see Jurassic Park at the SF Symphony may make me a target customer for any sequels, but that doesn't mean I'll go watch Jurassic World Rebirth. Sure, they're related, but they're two different products. The same is true for music biopics and similar derivative works.

This is important for anyone working on the never-ending superfan products. It's unclear whether fans will pay for additional perks and features on their streaming app. But they will pay for immersive entertainment, especially if it's based on what they already know and love.

Chartmetric Stat of the Week

Morgan Wallen currently has three albums in the Billboard 200’s Top 13, I’m the Problem (#3), One Thing at a Time (#6), and Dangerous: The Double Album (#13). Yet on Spotify, he sits at just 36M monthly listeners, ranking 115th globally. The contrast shows how album chart success and streaming popularity don’t always align, given all the factors and weights that go into each chart.