WNBA Moves Finals Games 3, 4 to State Farm Arena — SkimNews
Get the Sports newsletter
Daily sports — scores, transfers, the storylines from the leagues you actually follow. Free.
- Atlanta Dream will host Games 3 and 4 of the WNBA Finals at State Farm Arena — home of the Atlanta Hawks — which seats more than 17,000 fans, compared to the Gateway Center Arena's 3,500.
- Game 3 was moved up one day from Oct. 22 to Oct. 21 because a Sombr concert was already booked at State Farm that night; Game 4 stays on Oct. 24 with the Hawks shifting their own tipoff from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. to accommodate the WNBA.
- Six Dream regular-season games and all three playoff games had already been played at State Farm this season, and the franchise had been seeking a bigger home for the Finals since the matchup was set.
- WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the venue change 'dramatically expands the seating capacity' and will deliver 'the first WNBA Finals game to be played in the Atlanta market since 2013.'
- Golden State faced its own scheduling squeeze — a Doja Cat concert at Chase Center (capacity 18,064) on Oct. 19 forced the Game 2 concert to move to Oct. 25, clearing the WNBA Finals night.
Why it matters: Moving from a 3,500-seat college arena to a 17,000-seat NBA venue roughly quintuples ticket access for a Finals that hasn't reached Atlanta in 12 years — a concrete capacity win for the Dream, the Valkyries' expansion-era audience, and the league's push to fill bigger buildings for showcase games.
Ask SkimNews
