Ed Sheeran spent nearly two decades filling stadiums with 60,000 fans a night, but this week he squeezed his show into a 7,000-seat theater inside a South Florida casino resort, letting the crowd itself help decide what he’d play. The two-night stand at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, part of his Loop Tour, closed out with Sheeran telling the audience he doesn’t expect to be back in the area for a while.
According to WSVN, Sheeran said he used a big-screen QR code that let fans text in song requests live during the show, a mechanic he’s built into the Loop Tour to keep his setlist unpredictable night to night. The station reported that concertgoers described the concept as the best part of the experience, with several saying the show felt personal despite the size of the crowd. Fans also praised the graphics and laser lights that accompanied his set, per the same account.
Sheeran, who has toured for nearly two decades, called the run a milestone moment and said he’s been enjoying the format, the station noted. He’s framed the Loop Tour as a pause point of sorts — a chance to wind down after roughly 20 years of heavy touring before stepping back for a while.
A Theater Built for Close Encounters
The venue itself is part of why the format works. Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood is a $125 million, 7,000-seat theater designed by Scéno Plus so that no seat sits more than 150 feet from the stage, according to Visit Lauderdale. It debuted in October 2019 as part of the resort’s $1.5 billion expansion. Located at 1 Seminole Way in Hollywood, the theater sits within a complex that also houses South Florida’s largest casino floor at 140,000 square feet and the resort’s 450-foot guitar-shaped hotel tower, per Hanson Inc…