Sony Pictures Entertainment plans to invest $100 million in Cosm, an operator of domed theaters that make football games, concerts and films feel as though they're unfolding inside the room rather than on a screen.
The Culver City, California-based studio, an arm of Tokyo-based Sony Group, is wagering that these immersive, shared-reality venues can offer landlords a new draw to their property as traditional retail and theaters lose out those who shop and stream from home. Cosm, meanwhile, is accelerating a real estate rollout that already spans Los Angeles, Dallas and Atlanta.
It highlights a broader shift: Landlords are turning to immersive entertainment providers not only as tenants, but also as a way to lure visitors to a property. Like stadiums and arenas, venues such as Cosm are built to anchor mixed-use projects and spur repeat visits, keep customers around longer and boost spending at nearby restaurants, hotels and shops as consumers grow more selective about discretionary spending.
Sphere Entertainment — the operator of the similarly domed arena concept in Las Vegas — is expanding globally after posting significant revenue gains generated by its first globe-shaped venue. Other operators, including Live Nation, FunLab and Meow Wolf, are competing for consumer attention as landlords look for attractions that can drive repeat visits and activate mixed-use districts beyond traditional retail hours.
What’s more, Netflix is growing its Netflix House experiential retail concept at malls across the country. Paramount is partnering on a $3.4 billion theme park in South Korea that will turn its movie franchises into real-world attractions, while Comcast’s Universal is investing billions in new parks, including its Epic Universe development in Florida and additional destinations in the works.
“Cosm sits at the intersection of several trends shaping the future of entertainment,” Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Ravi Ahuja said in a statement. “We’ve followed Cosm since before launch and have been impressed with the quality of the experience and the enthusiasm it’s generating with audiences.”
Gaining traction
Cosm operates three roughly 65,000-square-foot locations: one at Hollywood Park in Inglewood adjacent to SoFi Stadium, another at the suburban mixed-use campus Grandscape near Dallas and a third at Centennial Yards in downtown Atlanta amid hotels, stadiums and theaters.
A Cosm venue may look less like a movie theater than a modern arena, with fans settling into seats beneath an 87-foot dome where the screen stretches beyond the edges of their vision. Each venue pairs its dome with restaurants, bars and event space, creating an entertainment hub designed to keep visitors hanging around and coming back.
Cosm, founded in 2020 by Dallas-based Mirasol Capital, traces its roots to technology developed for planetariums and large-format visualization systems. Then it expanded into sports and entertainment.
The concept centers on immersive, venue-based experiences that aim to replicate the feeling of being at a live event, combining high-resolution LED displays, spatial audio and in-house production systems.
Cosm reached a valuation of more than $1 billion after a 2024 funding round, underscoring the scale of Sony’s bet on the emerging format. Each venue can seat roughly 1,500 guests and offers ticket tiers ranging from about $17 to $600, while partnerships with leagues and broadcasters such as the NBA, Ultimate Fighting Championship and ESPN help fill the domes with live programming and events.
The concept gained momentum when fans flocked to its Los Angeles venue in 2024 to watch the National Basketball Association Finals and Ultimate Fighting Championship matches, demonstrating that immersive viewing can draw crowds even when the action is happening hundreds of miles away.
Scaling 'shared reality'
For Sony, the deal extends a broader push to monetize its library of films, television shows, games and music beyond the screen.
Rather than simply licensing intellectual property, the studio behind franchises including “Spider-Man,” “Jumanji” and “Ghostbusters” gains a physical venue where its content can become an experience, deepening fan engagement while opening up more ways to collect money. The company is already in the venue business, having acquired the food-and-beverage-focused Alamo Drafthouse theater chain in 2024.
For Cosm, the capital arrives as it shifts from proving its concept to building a national network. The funding will support additional venues and expansion of its technology, creating more opportunities to host live sports, concerts and immersive programming built around both original content and partners’ intellectual property.
Cosm plans to open a fourth venue in downtown Detroit this September, followed by a fifth in downtown Cleveland early next year, while additional domestic and international locations are under evaluation. The company also recently leased an 86,000-square-foot office in El Segundo to serve as its headquarters.
New York-based Sphere Entertainment is eyeing Middle East development in addition to its previously announced plans for a similar yet smaller high-tech arena in National Harbor in the Washington, D.C., area.
Those expansions align with broader demand for out-of-home entertainment. About 217 million visits were recorded at 20 leading entertainment concepts in 2025, roughly 12% above pre-pandemic levels, with visitors staying an average of 140 minutes, according to JLL’s Game On! Entertainment Report 2026.