After the Atlanta Dream reached the WNBA Finals last week, the celebration was interrupted by a potential problem: Rather than play the championship series\u2019 home games at the city\u2019s large downtown arena, scheduling conflicts appeared to force them to be hosted at a tiny arena. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, that scenario was avoided when the WNBA and NBA announced that after several logistical fixes, the Dream will host Games 3 and 4 of their WNBA Finals matchup against the Golden State Valkyries at Atlanta\u2019s 17,004-seat State Farm Arena, rather than a 3,500-seat venue south of downtown. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe change of venue dramatically expands the seating capacity and ensures that the Dream will be able to provide an extraordinary atmosphere for the first WNBA Finals game to be played in the Atlanta market since 2013,\u201d WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. \u201cWe are pleased that thousands more fans across the Southeast region will have the opportunity to experience the ultimate WNBA action \u2014 the WNBA Finals \u2014 in person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since 2021, the Dream have played its virtually all of its regular-season games at the 3,500-seat Gateway Center Arena about 30 minutes south of downtown, the smallest home arena in the WNBA, by capacity. During this postseason, though, the Dream had shifted all home games to State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA\u2019s Hawks, to an average attendance of 9,745. The location shift was a preview of a multi-year deal that will see the Dream play home games full-time at State Farm Arena beginning next season.<\/p>\n
After the Dream swept the New York Liberty to reach their first WNBA Finals since 2013 last week, however, conflicts immediately arose: a Sombr concert was set at State Farm Arena on Oct. 22, the date of Game 3, and a Hawks game was scheduled for Oct. 24, the date of Game 4. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After the Atlanta Dream reached the WNBA Finals last week, the celebration was interrupted by a potential problem:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":["post-931940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}