Your Black Friday Buys Could Show Up on the Las Vegas Sphere

As you’re scrolling through Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals this week, your purchases just might make an appearance on the Las Vegas Sphere.

Shopify worked with Sphere to create a real-time activation on the structure’s Exosphere—which it claims is the world’s largest LED screen—enveloping Sin City’s immersive, globe-shaped venue. That screen opened up to advertisers last year, offering a new, over-the-top way for advertisers to make their mark in a famously over-the-top city.

It’s also a way for Shopify to highlight the scale of its platform. It’s often an invisible, behind-the-scenes ecommerce tech partner to businesses that range from tiny entrepreneurs to major retailers, explained Brennan Loh, director of brand at Shopify.

“On an annual basis, Shopify would be the second largest retailer in the U.S.,” Loh said. Earlier this year, cumulative sales made on the platform since its inception surpassed $1 trillion.

It’s the second year in a row that Shopify has worked with Sphere to bring Black Friday shopping data from its ecommerce platform to Las Vegas. The Live Globe concept predates the Sphere, though—Shopify has been creating a digital visualization of its Black Friday purchase data annually since 2018.

The Live Globe shows a map of the world with streaks of light that dart across borders and continents as purchases are made—visualizing each transaction that happens through the ecommerce platform.

This year, there’ll be additional Easter Egg-style animations, Loh explained. For example, every time a merchant makes their first-ever sale on the platform, fireworks will explode from their location on the map.

BFCM Live on the @SphereVegas

And I mean truly live! It turns out that the Sphere can be powered by the Unreal Engine, so of course we had to go there. Place an order from your phone, see it arc in front of you! pic.twitter.com/ecsNIQhVic

— tobi lutke (@tobi) November 29, 2024

Shopify and Sphere inked a multi-year deal that’ll ensure the 580,000-square-foot activation becomes a yearly tradition. The companies declined to disclose financial details of that deal.

“We want brands to come in to be innovative and challenge us, and for us, challenge them back and do amazing work and show the potential and possibility of this canvas,” said Ned McNeilage, chief creative officer at Sphere. Shopify’s Black Friday data visualization effort is a perfect example of that kind of innovation, he said.

The technological lift of the Sphere activation serves a dual role for Shopify—first, it aims to give peace of mind to the merchants and retailers that use the platform or are considering it. If Shopify can pull this off, the thinking goes, then they’re an even more trustworthy partner to handle the modern complexities of running a global ecommerce business.

Loh also hopes that the activation will help small merchants and entrepreneurs on the platform to feel seen during the busiest time of the year.

“Running a business can be pretty lonely,” he said. “When you see all of this activity on Sphere or in the Live Globe, you suddenly go, ‘I’m a part of something much bigger.’”

Some Shopify staff will be on the ground in Vegas on Black Friday to coordinate helicopter and drone footage of the Sphere as shoppers are doing their thing from all over the world. Loh’s hoping that content will gain traction on social amid the flow of ecommerce dollars.

“This is really not about the people in Vegas seeing this,” Loh said. “This is about creating something that, as a piece of content, will stop folks in their scroll.”