In the four days since announcing U2’s first dates for a limited engagement at the massive new Sphere in Las Vegas, the number of shows has incrementally expanded. The mere five gigs announced on Monday got stretched to a dozen shows as of Wednesday, and now, come Thursday morning, five more were added, to make it 17 concerts going on sale this week.
But if you must see this show, don’t sleep on these 17 dates under the assumption that the band will just keep adding more extensions. The extension through Nov. 4 that was announced Thursday could well represent the end of the run, since, in an earlier interview with Variety, the Edge said the band would likely be limited to six weeks in the venue — and that’s just how far these new dates take it.
The group is now officially booked into the one-of-a-kind venue from Sept. 9 through Nov. 4, mostly on weekends, with some Wednesday dates as well. The group isn’t officially declaring that this now represents the entirety of the engagement, but the Edge has made it clear what the outer boundaries of their time in Vegas would be. If there are more dates to be added, there is only one additional weekend they could take place before Sphere’s calendar is booked with other events.
In a Q&A with Variety published on Monday, the Edge said, “Because of the size of the venue, the scope of this run will be probably a maximum of six weeks. And we couldn’t possibly really realistically do more shows than that. So I don’t think it really qualifies as a classic residency.” With the addition of the latest dates, U2’s engagement at Sphere now stretches across six weeks, as the Edge predicted.
The venue appears to still be dark the weekend of Nov. 10, which could possibly allow for U2 to still add a couple of extra dates to close out the run then. But there aren’t any immediate openings after that. The weekend of Nov. 11 finds Sphere unavailable because of the F1 race on the streets of Las Vegas, with seats have been sold outside Sphere for racing fans.
Then, after that, Darren Aronofsky’s film “Postcard From Earth” is selling tickets for Fridays and Saturdays from Nov. 24 of this year all the way up through April of 2025 — strongly indicating that U2 does not currently intend to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas or any other holiday for the next year and a half in Nevada. Granted, it might not be the hardest thing in the world to cancel a few distant Aronofsky screenings if U2 did decide to make a return engagement. But with the band having suggested a regular tour and album are possibilities for 2024, the safest bet is to assume that U2 really does plan to keep this run to six weekends, or seven, tops.
Assuming the run does stay limited to 17 shows and all of them sell out — which seems like a safe bet — then, with a capacity of about 20,000 attendees per concert (upped from the normal 17,000 because of a general admission standing area), U2 will have played for roughly 340,000 people by the time they move out of the sphere in November.
