If The Sphere doesn’t want to be in business with Beyoncé, Beyoncé certainly doesn’t want to be in business with The Sphere. Last week, CEO of Sphere Entertainment James Dolan sent Cowboy Carter a cease and desist for depicting herself, as a towering giant, lifting the Las Vegas concert venue off the ground in one of her tour visuals. Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment was quick to respond, covering up The Sphere with a depiction of Allegiant Stadium instead. You can check out a clip of the new version, shared by Parkwood, on Instagram here. The caption reads, “What happens in Vegas starts with a BANG.”
Dolan’s issue with the “Cowboy Carter and the Rodeo Chitlin’ Circuit Tour” visual was not just that he hadn’t authorized Beyoncé to use The Sphere, but also that the image made it seem like she would be performing there at the end of her tour. It was previously reported that the singer was in talks to end with a Sphere residency, but it didn’t pan out. Instead, Beyoncé is closing out her U.S. performances at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada—thus the hasty and slightly janky-looking replacement.
The cease and desist always seemed like a shortsighted overreaction, particularly since being commemorated in such a way put the Las Vegas Sphere on par with much older, more iconic landmarks that giant Beyoncé encounters in the tour visual, including the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and the Hollywood sign. We can only speculate that the breakdown of talks for Beyoncé’s performance at The Sphere resulted in bad blood between Dolan and Beyoncé. The language of the letter (“Beyoncé—many orders of magnitude larger than the Sphere venue—leans over, picks up the venue, and looms over it”) implies Dolan felt Beyoncé was mocking the building by lifting it in her giant, godlike hands. Swapping it out for Allegiant Stadium definitely feels like a taunt, but no one can say she didn’t comply with the legal threat.
