On Sunday, timed to coincide with President Trump’s 80th birthday, there was a massive UFC event—including a consequential match deciding the lightweight title—staged on the south lawn of the White House. The setup to this event, UFC Freedom 250, probably didn’t escape your attention, since there was so much coverage of the complex construction project that allowed for televised, regulation combat sports competition to occur on what many American politics fans consider sacred ground. There were, for instance, 494 porta potties, I’m informed.
But if, like me, eleven years of Donald J. Trump at the center of American public life have numbed you to the idea that Trump is despoiling the dignity of the U.S. presidency or something, you might have had a hard time caring that any of this was happening, at any level, at all. One more screeching sound in the big screech orchestra that is U.S. politics.
Well if you’re in Atlanta, Dallas, or Los Angeles, have I got a way to wake up your deadened senses: Cosm, which advertises itself as an “experiential hub.” Cosm’s domed, theater-style viewing rooms are meant to make attendees feel “completely immersed” via a proprietary concept called “shared reality.”
On social media, you might have seen posts featuring clips of the shared reality version of the first Harry Potter movie, which exists thanks to Cosm’s partnership with Warner Bros. Viewing a movie in shared reality means the dome itself displays an immersive 3-D rendering of the setting for a given scene, and the movie is shown on a smaller rectangle within the domed screen. For just a small sample of what this concept might feel like at home, find a YouTube walkthrough of Diagon Alley at Universal Studios in Orlando and run that fullscreen, then in a smaller window overlaid on top of that video, watch the Diagon Alley scene in the first Harry Potter movie at the same time.
I love this sort of gimmick. What moron, you might be asking, is seeing every Avatar movie in high frame-rate 3-D? Who wants to watch the AI-altered Wizard of Oz presentation at the Sphere in Las Vegas? I’m that moron.
Plus, I had heard from a friend who went to a Cosm showing of a Premier League soccer game that sports experiences at Cosm draw most of the viewer’s attention to the big image on the main dome, rather then the dome being a supplement to what’s on the smaller rectangle.
But When Monster Energy Drink, one of the main sponsors of Freedom 250, emailed me an invitation to watch the match at Cosm Los Angeles on their dime, it wasn’t the sports event I had in mind as an introduction—I prefer wholesome ball sports—but I knew I couldn’t say no.
After all, I knew there would be a lot to learn about American politics and culture by having my eyes and ears pummeled by the most deeply Trumpified version of America’s bloodiest mainstream sport. “When you can’t be there, be here at Cosm,” is the venue’s slogan. And, well, I didn’t want to be there.
Here’s what I experienced at Cosm:
4:44 p.m. PST: I’m seated in the special designated section for people working for, or invited by, Monster Energy Drink. We’re in a box way off on the left side of the screen dome. In fact, our box obstructs a tiny part of the edge of the image for the other audience members.
What we’re seeing right now on the dome is just a live feed of the UFC octagon under a protective cover. It’s sort of like watching a live webcam feed somewhere with nothing going on, but massive.
The audience is about 75% male—about what I expected I guess. One middle-aged dad in the crowd is wearing a red “USA” baseball cap like the one the president wears when he golfs sometimes. You don’t see many MAGA hats in LA (although you see tons 45 minutes down the road in Orange County) so the “USA” graphic is a slightly less obtrusive way to support Trump in public here. Most attendees are younger, and just look like a younger-skewing selection of the people you see in any LA sports stadium.
4:59: It’s windy in Washington, DC, and the breeze is shaking the cameras. On a smaller screen, one might not notice, but Cosm’s main domed, 8K display, advertised as 87-feet in diameter (presumably including the ceiling), jitters make the whole room feel like it’s shaking.
Cosm doesn’t use a projector. It calls what I’m looking at “a full stack immersive LED dome experience solution.” The image is bright and clear, and mostly seamless, although I can see square outlines through some of the panels—particularly the ones just to my left that are close enough to touch, and especially in spots where the image is darker.
The display on the ceiling is showing an animated image made to look like the Claw, the UFC’s truss structure used as a ground support system for the event. The ceiling image also features the White House next to other famous DC landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial. It’s a little confusing when you first see it, because you can also see the Claw on the main screen, but from a slightly different angle.
5:05: The audio is up around rock-concert level. Currently it’s blasting us with the voice of a TV reporter talking about the weather in Washington D.C.
5:16: One of the UFC announcers on the screen says Trump will be taking his seat ringside soon. I look around to see if anyone looks excited for that. So far, no one does.
5:25: The birthday boy, Trump, is announced, and struts through the White House halls next to his pal Dana White, the CEO of UFC. It’s sort of like a West Wing-style walk-and-talk, but neither guy is mic’d. I think I hear scattered applause and one or two hoots of approval, but the reaction is mostly muted. I don’t think most of these people paid to be here for politics. The national anthem is performed, and maybe a third of the Cosm crowd actually stands.
Instead of taking his seat ringside, this sequence ends with Trump waving from what appears to be the Truman Balcony.
5:29: The angle switches at last to an angle much closer to the ring. Then it changes back for a better view of the Air Force flyover.
This venue’s presentation of the Air Force flyover is breathtaking and as immersive as was advertised—tricking me for a moment into forgetting I’m not there. As a connoisseur of spectacle, I love jet flyovers, and if Cosm played this footage before a showing of, say, Avatar, I would be in heaven.
By my count there are four camera angles so far for the main screen, plus the more traditional TV-style feeds shown on smaller rectangles within the dome image.
Trump is ringside now. For a minute I thought he was going to watch the whole thing from that balcony.
5:30: Five or so guys in Cosm—including some in the Monster section—attempt to get a U-S-A chant going. The reaction in the room is muted at best, and the chant peters out after about four repetitions. This could be overt, president-related jingoism, or, since some of the fights tonight will pit Americans against foreigners, the more harmless, sports-related jingoism you see at something like the World Cup.
5:32: I’m relieved to see the TV-style rectangles shift closer to the ceiling. Since there’s a slight delay, there was a confusing, jittery effect caused by seeing those rectangles right next to the actual TVs attached to the legs of the Claw on the White House lawn. Repositioning them helps a lot.
5:34: Joe Rogan is, of course, in attendance in Washington, D.C. He’s in a suit (presumably out of respect). His tie is very short.
5:54: Lopes vs. Garcia starts, and I finally get to see the Cosm UFC concept fully fleshed out. If anything the shakiness of the cameras mounted on the octagon helps with immersion, creating the illusion that you can feel the heft of the fighters’ as they dance around one another. It quickly ends with a decisive knockout by Lopes. In the final moments of the fight, I notice my eyes have been gravitating toward the TV-style displays against my will. Maybe my instinct is to push back against “immersion” in this experience, but I’m not sure that’s the issue.
An energetic and friendly woman named Jody, who tells me she’s the administrative assistant for brand marketing at Monster, says in a half-disappointed voice “I guess it’s over.” She says she normally doesn’t watch fights.
6:08: A preview of Monster’s immersive ad experience plays. It’s an animation of a monster can on the ceiling display with fire and embers. The embers sort of rain down onto the main image.
6:11: There’s a second, more immersive ad. The lights dim, the screen goes black. There’s a giant CG Monster Energy Drink can. It only lasts a few seconds, but you can’t say anyone in this room is thinking about anything other than Monster Energy Drink while it’s playing. It’s the only time this evening I see an image fully make use of the front of the screen at the same time as the ceiling. One can’t help but notice that the marketing material takes fuller advantage of the venue’s format than the featured content.
6:23: The Monster Girls walk through the theater carrying sparklers at the same time the UFC’s Octagon Girls make their first onscreen appearance.
6:24: The second fight starts, and Bo Nickal quickly forces Kyle Daukaus onto the mat, turning the fight into one of those UFC matches that resembles high school wrestling. The simulated TV screens are incalculably better than the main Cosm viewing angle for taking this in because the fighters just look like an undifferentiated, twitching lump in the center of the giant screen. It occurs to me that, in fairness, the fighters would also look like an undifferentiated, twitching lump to the president watching from next to the octagon.
7:10: In the aftermath of the Ruffy-Chandler fight, I get another sense of real immersion at an odd moment. The TV-style displays are showing a version of this event with heavy cutting, but on the big Cosm screen we get an unbroken shot of Rogan, the officials, the camera crew, and everyone else standing in the octagon, waiting to close out the fight by announcing and interviewing the winner. I do kinda sorta feel like I am awkwardly milling around with them.
7:30: Cosm has an announcer with a mic, and he’s shouting things. He might be saying someone’s car is double parked, or reminding us to tip our bartenders. I have no idea because the venue is doing nothing to make his audio stand out from the broadcast. He’s done this several times. It takes until 3/4 of the way through his spiel before I realize that voice is even coming from somewhere in the same room as me.
7:43: Some of the crowd is on its feet for the heavyweight bout. These bigger guys shake the camera a lot. I also notice that the distortion from the curvature of the image is becoming more noticeable the longer I’m here. I sense it’s because repeatedly seeing the fighters move from one end of the screen to the other makes the fisheye effect impossible to ignore. In fact, at times it makes the image incomprehensible.
7:52: Josh Hokit, the winner of the heavyweight bout, says, “Shout out to Trump for having the balls to put some sh*t like this on.” It’s the first I’ve thought about Trump in a long time. I sense that the UFC itself is controlling what’s being broadcast here, and they don’t conceive of this as a campaign event for Trump or the Republican party, but as an opportunity to build their brand (and hey, you are reading about the UFC on Gizmodo dot com, so I think it worked).
But Hokit also says, “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?” So yes, this event is as grotesque as we were led to believe it would be.
7:55: I have to move to the other side of this box for a few minutes. The Monster Girls need my spot so they can throw t-shirts down to the crowd.
8:14: The bantamweights, O’Malley and Zahabi, are much more exciting visually. They’re both lanky guys, and they move much more fluidly than the heavyweights before them. This format loves them.
8:16: O’Malley, who is American, beats Zahabi, who is Canadian. There are finally some successful “USA! USA!” chants coming over the system audio from Washington, D.C., and also in the room. These chants genuinely don’t seem malevolent.
9:18: I just finished watching the second of two montages that I can only describe as “commercials for America.” The first one was a bunch of general footage of Americans working and looking normal and wholesome. The second one seemed to be themed around bipartisanship, featuring speeches from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. It looks like there’s going to be a third commercial for America, but it becomes a promo for the last fight of the evening, Justin Gaethje vs. Ilia Topuria. It must be a big deal because these are the only UFC fighters tonight that I’ve actually heard of.
9:23: Gaethje starts his entrance walk from the Oval Office. People around me cheer. It’s not clear if this is because they like Gaethje, or because they’re impressed that the showbiz elements of this sporting event have so fully embedded themselves in the inner sanctum of the U.S. presidency.
I look at Kalshi right as this match is starting. Topuria is heavily favored—79% to 21%. I notice just after checking Kalshi that Kalshi’s rival, Polymarket, is a sponsor of UFC Freedom 250.
9:52: I’ve been in here for five hours. There are now drunk guys in this box and they’re saying “whoop!” “Knock his ass out!” That sort of thing. The thought occurs to me at long last that this is a sports bar, which is a comforting way to frame what I’ve just experienced. This is the most hi-tech sports bar in Los Angeles, and if I were watching the Dodgers, I would probably be having a fantastic time—fisheye effect or none.
I check the price to watch a recent Dodger game in the dome at Cosm. It looks like tickets started at $92. As I write this, the minimum price for tickets to the next game at Dodger Stadium is $64.
But I’m very much not watching baseball. Gaethje and Topuria are in a war against each other and Topuria’s face has been turned into red goo.
10:08: Weir says, “They stopped it.” I’m not a UFC expert, but I think they just ran out of rounds. Gaethje is the clear winner—an upset. Like the rest of the American winners, he shakes hands with Trump.
10:15: It feels like no one wants to be in Cosm a second longer after the last fight, and we stream out into the night as quickly as possible. I feel like I’ve taken a beating myself. That might not have been the most thrilling night of sports I’ve ever seen, but it went fine. In D.C., it’s not Trump’s 80th birthday anymore, which probably suits him just fine. The details of Trump’s deal with Iran are starting to trickle out.
10:20: On the way to my car, when I’m a block or so from the structure where I parked to get to Cosm, I hear Shakira’s voice coming from the Intuit Dome where she’s performing. Spanish-speaking hot dog vendors are chitchatting and setting up for when thousands of Shakira fans pour out onto this sidewalk. I know enough Spanish to know they’re not talking about Donald Trump. There are an awful lot of entertainment options in this country, aren’t there?
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