I HAVE FOUND THE PERFECT PLACE TO WATCH A SPORTS EVENT ON PLANET EARTH
Much better than a billionaire pal’s screening room, the Dome at Cosm blows fans away, literally pressing us onto an interactive surface via an 87-foot wraparound screen with cameras larger than life
If you aim to see a zit near Deion Sanders’ quinquagenarian graybeard, you might be devoured by it. Or, perhaps, a flick of a steroid “accidently” consumed by Jannik Sinner. This would be among our visions of a panorama unlike any witnessed in the interactive galaxy of sports. I am sitting in the Dome area of a space called Cosm — as in cosmic — which is considerably better and cheaper than attending an event in the front row.
An Irish bar with 40 big screens, this is not. Your billionaire friend’s screening room, this is not. I grabbed two tickets for the USC-LSU football game Sunday night and didn’t know Brian Kelly would be massive enough on a screen to spray spittle into the crowd. The wraparound programming display stretches 87-feet wide and spans up the side of a building while death-swallowing us with views from the field — and I mean, Christopher Nolan holding cameras and allowing each player and coach to become gigantic.
We’ve heard about Sphere in Las Vegas. This is our version in Los Angeles, down the street from SoFi Stadium and the new Intuit Dome, smaller and more immersive on our raging senses. I watched USC win and noticed Miller Moss grinning out toward the LAX runways, with tickets as low as $96 on three levels involving several hundred seats. On Wednesday, I can watch Sinner play Danill Medvedev for as low as $44. Sanders and Colorado play at Nebraska on Saturday, when tickets in the second level range from $99. The UFC clogs the weekends, and later, the NBA and NHL will have regular-season games and join the Premier League. If you want less expensive seats, sit in the Hall area with its own major screens.
All that’s missing is the NFL, as the company that runs Cosm uses its own on-site cameras. Do you really think Roger Goodell and 32 owners would allow a side-gig to woo fans lodged in the farthest stadium reaches, with the Rams and Chargers playing across sidewalks in Inglewood? It seems odd, when ESPN and ABC are removed by DirecTV in a contract mess, that networks aren’t using their sleazy pull to end Cosm. Let’s hope they stay cool, though they won’t.
“We’re redefining the way the world experiences content and up-leveling fandom by opening our first Cosm venue in the center of the entertainment capital of the world,” said Jeb Terry, Cosm’s CEO and president. “It isn’t just a place, it’s a feeling. It’s the energy of the crowd, the exhilaration of sitting courtside at the biggest sports events, the thrill of standing front row at your dream concert, the intensity of being enveloped in immersive environments that you have to experience to believe. Cosm is bringing that to life — first in Los Angeles, then around the world.”
In Hollywood, this is far beyond a sports venue. One can see art explosions from “Liquidverse: Microcosm and Macrocosm” — which Sanders would call his son the quarterback and Travis Hunter — along with “Orbital” and “Seek.” If you need a break from the intensity, they do have food, drinks, bathrooms and an escalator-fed rooftop, where football and basketball fans see SoFi and Intuit and realize they’ve escaped to the center of a new universe.
I normally don’t react to dynamic ventures, even when the LED screen is 12K and the facility holds only 1,700 guests. I tried it. I saw the screen and almost crumpled. We’ll pass on Texas A&M at Florida, where they might have to pay us. But international soccer works. And so does one of the best college games of the season, Georgia at Alabama on Sept. 28.
I’m in at $127. When Kirby Smart shakes Kalen DeBoer’s hand, the image will make me feel very small just a few feet away. Cosm refers to an “innovation in dome design, pixel management, 3D and real-time rendering, and high-resolution live video workflows for planetariums and amusement parks around the world.”
Disney World has found sports. Just don’t utter “Disney.” And don’t say a word about the absence of gamblers.
Let us watch the damned game in perfect peace.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.