Dream Sell Out 17,000-Seat NBA Arena After WNBA Finals Schedule Change
ATLANTA — The Atlanta Dream will welcome a sellout crowd to State Farm Arena for their first home Finals game since 2013.
A Dream source told Front Office Sports that the franchise has sold out its tickets for Game 3 of the WNBA Finals scheduled for Wednesday at the 17,044-seat State Farm Arena, home of the NBA’s Hawks. State Farm Arena is owned by the city of Atlanta and operated by the Hawks organization.
The sellout comes a week after the WNBA announced that Games 3 and 4 of the Finals would be rescheduled to allow the Dream to play at State Farm Arena instead of Gateway Center, their home since 2021, which fits a league-low 3,500 fans.
Game 3 was originally scheduled to be played Thursday, the same night as a Sombr concert at State Farm Arena. Game 4 is still on Saturday, the same day as the Hawks’ regular-season home opener. But the WNBA Finals game was pushed up from 3:30 p.m. ET to 1 p.m., while the Hawks game will tip off at 8:30 p.m. instead of 8 p.m.
It’s not yet clear where the Dream will play Game 6, if the series extends that far. Game 6 is scheduled for Oct. 29 at 8 p.m., the same night as a Hawks game against the Cavaliers at State Farm Arena.
The Dream and Golden State Valkyries are tied at 1 in their best-of-seven series.
The Dream played all three of their first- and second-round home playoff games at State Farm Arena, but they averaged fewer than 10,000 fans at the venue. For those games, they opened only the lower bowl of the arena, which fits about 8,800 fans, and a small section of the upper portion.
The team told FOS earlier this month that it closed the upper bowl due to the short turnaround to sell tickets for the playoffs. The Dream had only a few days between clinching home court advantage, learning their first-round opponent, and hosting Game 1 of the first round.
After the Dream and Valkyries each swept their semifinals opponents, both teams had more than a week before Game 1 of the Finals, and nearly two weeks before the first game in Atlanta.
State Farm Arena CEO Steve Koonin told FOS last week that the entire arena will be used for the WNBA Finals.
This is not the first time the Dream have sold out State Farm Arena this year; the team played six regular-season games at the NBA arena, selling out five times.
Earlier this month, the Dream and State Farm Arena announced the Dream will play all of their regular-season games at the NBA venue starting next season. A Dream spokesperson also confirmed to FOS that State Farm Arena will hold WNBA playoff dates.
“We want to be partners with [the Dream and WNBA]. We want to give them high praise because they’ve done a great job as a league and as a franchise,” Koonin said. He added that the deal was for five years.
From 2008 to 2016, the Dream had played in State Farm Arena, which was then known as Philips Arena. They moved to Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavilion from 2017 to 2018, returned to State Farm Arena from 2019 to 2020, and then moved to Gateway Center.
The team’s last WNBA Finals home game, however, wasn’t played in State Farm Arena. The Dream played their lone home 2013 Finals game at the Gwinnett Center (now Gas South Arena) in Duluth, Georgia, about 25 miles from downtown Atlanta due to a conflict at the then–Philips Arena with Disney On Ice.
The game drew 5,000 fans, about 2,000 fewer than the average Dream regular-season game drew this season.
The post Dream Sell Out 17,000-Seat NBA Arena After WNBA Finals Schedule Change appeared first on Front Office Sports.
Source: frontofficesports.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.