The 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be held at Sphere in Las Vegas on Friday, June 28 and Saturday, June 29, marking the first time the event will be held in Las Vegas. Additionally, the 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft will be the first event televised live from Sphere.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman made the official announcement during the broadcast of the 2024 NHL Draft Lottery. “The NHL is proud to bring the first sports event and the first live television broadcast to Sphere,” said Steve Mayer, NHL senior EVP and chief content officer. “Together with the amazing team at Sphere, we plan to deliver an NHL Draft like no other, introducing the bright future of hockey in an innovative and exhilarating setting.”

The 2024 Upper Deck NHL Draft will take place over two days: Friday, June 28 (Round 1, televised on ESPN, ESPN+, Sportsnet and TVA Sports, starting at 4 p.m. PT) and Saturday, June 29 (Rounds 2-7, televised on ESPN+, NHL Network, Sportsnet and SN1, starting at 8:30 a.m. PT). NHL club executives, scouts, and coaches will be present on the NHL Draft floor, while thousands of fans and hundreds of print, television and radio media are expected to attend.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand AVNetwork

LAS VEGAS—Sphere Entertainment and the NFL this week said they will collaborate on creating custom Super Bowl LVIII content and displaying it on Sphere’s fully programmable Exosphere LED exterior this week.

Sphere also will be featured in CBS Sports’ coverage of Super Bowl LVIII on CBS and Paramount+ as part of the collaboration.

“We welcome Super Bowl LVIII to Las Vegas, which continues to reinforce its place as a destination for the biggest events in sports and entertainment,” said Joel Fisher, executive vice president, Marquee Events and Operations for MSG Entertainment, which oversees marquee events for Sphere. “As a new Las Vegas landmark, Sphere is recognized worldwide for its dynamic visuals, and we’re proud to collaborate with the NFL on content that will captivate audiences both in Las Vegas and watching on CBS.”

Super Bowl Week in Las Vegas officially kicks off today (Feb. 5), as does a slate of custom Exosphere content that will run throughout the week. Sphere will display content that includes:

• A countdown clock leading up to kick-off on Sunday
• A welcome visual that will serve as a beacon for the hundreds of thousands of people expected to descend on Las Vegas
• Key graphics highlighting the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers.

In celebration of Super Bowl history, Sphere will showcase all 57 Super Bowl rings. Throughout the game, content on the Exosphere will run live in real time in response to action on the field, Sphere Entertainment said.

During the game, the CBS Sports' broadcast of Super Bowl LVII will showcase Sphere. Both the Exosphere and the interior of Sphere will be featured as part of two curated moments in custom, one-of-a-kind videos filmed at the venue that showcase the immersive capabilities of Sphere's 16K x 16K resolution interior display plane, it said.

The Exosphere consists of about 1.2 million LED pucks spaced eight inches apart. With 48 individual LED diodes apiece, each of which can display 256 million colors.

More information is available on the company’s website.

BURBANK, Calif., and GENEVA, Switzerland—New details have emerged about the Big Sky camera system used at the Sphere in Las Vegas to capture images that immerse audiences in a visual environment up, over and around them with a 160,000-square-foot 16K x 16K display.

Designed by the Sphere Studios team, which develops original content for the Sphere, the camera system relies on a first-of-its-kind 18K sensor manufactured by STMicroelectronics (ST) to capture video at the scale and fidelity needed for the Sphere’s display.

The sensor—said to be the world’s largest cinema camera sensor in commercial use—works with the sharpest cinematic lenses to capture detailed, large-format images, Sphere Studios said.

“Big Sky significantly advances cinematic camera technology with each element representing a leap in design and manufacturing innovation,” said Deanan DaSilva, lead architect of Big Sky at Sphere Studios. “The sensor on any camera is critical to image quality, but given the size and resolution of Sphere’s display, Big Sky’s sensor had to go beyond any existing capability. ST, working closely with Sphere Studios, leveraged their extensive expertise to manufacture a groundbreaking sensor that not only expands the possibilities for immersive content at Sphere, but also across the entertainment industry.”

Big Sky’s 316-megapixel sensor is almost 7X larger and 40X higher resolution than the full-frame sensors found in high-end commercial cameras. The die, which measures 9.92cm x 8.31cm (82.4 cm2), is twice as large as a wallet-sized photograph, and only four full die fit on a 300mm wafer. The system is also capable of capturing images at 120 fps and transferring data at 60 gigabytes per second, Sphere Studios said.

“ST has been on the cutting edge of imaging technology, IP and tools to create unique solutions with advanced features and performance for almost 25 years,” said Alexandre Balmefrezol, executive vice president and Imaging Sub-Group general manager at STMicroelectronics. “Building a custom sensor of this size, resolution and speed with low noise, high dynamic range and seemingly impossible yield requirements, presented a truly novel challenge for ST – one that we successfully met from the very first wafer out of our 12-inch (300mm) wafer fab in Crolles, France.”

Big Sky also allows filmmakers to capture large-format images from a single camera without having to stitch content together from multiple cameras, avoiding issues such as near distance limitations and seams between images. Sphere Studios has filed for 10 patents in association with Big Sky’s technology, it said.

Darren Aronofsky’s “Postcard from Earth,” currently showing at Sphere as part of The Sphere Experience, is the first cinematic production to use Big Sky.

More information is available on the entertainment venue’s website.

IRVINE, CALIF.—The Teradek Sphere hit the dance floor before its upcoming release to help stream 360 video of the “Dancing With the Stars” season finale. The Sphere, which is designed to compress, stitch and stream 360-degree video to the web, offered online viewers a 360-degree view of the main stage during the broadcast.

The footage was shot with four GoPros mounted on Teradek’s proprietary rigging system, allowing fans to pan all around the studio.

Sphere is a four-channel H.264 encoder that compresses and streams 4K footage to an iOS or OS X device for real-time stitching. The content can then be streamed to an online platform that supports 360-degree video. A second Sphere unit can be connected to additional camera rigs through a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Teradek plans to release the Sphere on July 1 at a starting price of $2,990.