UFC Chief Content Officer Assures the Sphere Won’t Distract Fighters

UFC chief content officer and executive producer Craig Borsari
assures that the Sphere won’t distract fighters at UFC
306.

Headlined by Sean
O’Malley’s bantamweight title defense against Merab
Dvalishvili, UFC 306 is set to go down at the Sphere in Las
Vegas on Saturday. Also billed as Noche UFC Riyadh Season, the
one-of-a-kind event will be the promotion’s first and only venture
into the Sphere.

The Sphere boasts a wraparound 16K x 16K resolution, 240-feet tall
interior display covering 160,000 square feet, made of 64,000 LED
tiles. Also a celebration of the Mexican Independence Day, the
event will have movies that will be playing on the entire media
plane. This has raised many concerns about fighters getting
potentially distracted by the unprecedented magnitude of the
event.

However, Borsari revealed that the promotion has already a plan in
place to avoid any distraction for fighters. Borsari shared that
while there will be movies playing on the entire media plane, the
fights in between will be in a “quiet state.” While the promotion
wants those in attendance and watching from home to have a “cool”
experience, they won’t be taking away any attention when the fights
are on.

“We’re going to use six 90-second films that’ll take over the
entire media plane…When the films are over, they transition into
what we’re calling worlds,” Borsari told Shakeil Mahjouri. “Within the worlds there are
different states. They are active states where things are going on
within those worlds. When fighters are walking out, they’ll be a
bit more active, there will be some more activity. Different
lighting effects, different animations going on when fighters are
walking out. When the fights are going on, that’s what we’re
calling the most quiet state. It’s all about the fights at that
point and we want to have a very cool environment for those that
are in the venue and for the folks at home watching on broadcast.
But we don’t want to be the primary driver of the creative at that
moment. Anytime there are two fighters inside the Octagon, it’s
about them. So we’ve adjusted the state of these worlds to really
quiet down and allow us to focus on the fight action.”

Fights not playing on the entire media plane further raises the
concern of a far away view for those in the back seats. However,
the UFC has figured a way around that as well with Image
Magnification. Big enough IMAG screens will be projecting the
fights in the Sphere without the distorting the visual.

“We’re gonna utilize what’s called an acronym called IMAG or Image
Magnification,” Borsari said. “Which is, our typical broadcast feed
will go into these IMAG cutouts within the environment. It won’t be
full media plane takeover. That presents all kinds of issues. If
the fighters were 80 feet tall, you’d get some distortion, it would
start to get really wonky in the way you would be experiencing the
fights. We found what is a fairly large sizeable IMAG cutout to fit
within the world, that will allow viewers to get a really cool high
resolution image of the fight action, of our athletes. And also
allow us to continue to storytell because it will sit within this
environment that we’ve built.”