The Wings will play their 2027 games in the AAC. Then what?
The question lingered over the Wings’ immediate future for months: where would they play next season? The answer was supposed to be Memorial Auditorium, after the team cut a deal with the city of Dallas to move from Arlington into the Convention Center. But renovations, to put it mildly, have not gone according to plan—have you driven by the Convention Center recently?— and it became obvious that the arena wouldn’t be ready for play next summer. And since the team wasn’t sticking around in Arlington for another year, the city needed a backup plan in place.
Per the Morning News‘ Myah Taylor, that plan is the American Airlines Center, where the Wings will have played a total of five games by the end of the 2026 season. So far, those games have gone well: the Wings sold out both of their AAC appearances in 2025 (against the Indiana Fever, not-D Magazine-editor-Caitlin Clark’s team) and brought in a respectable 13,236 for a July game against the Chicago Sky. The latter is the intriguing data point. It’s one thing to sell every seat with the hope of seeing Paige Bueckers square off against another young superstar in Clark, who wound up missing both games due to injury. It’s quite another to post a strong gate when the opponent is one of the WNBA’s also-rans.
So can the Wings, who are speeding to the playoffs in Bueckers’ second season, keep that momentum going over a full home slate, with many more opponents like Chicago on the schedule? What happens if they do? The stated plan is to move into Memorial in 2028, and one imagines the city isn’t looking to scupper it given the 15-year agreement that prompted those renovations. On the other hand, that deal was cut before both the Mavs and Stars announced plans to flee downtown, and the upstart Dallas Pulse have talked up the idea of moving into Memorial once it’s complete. So what if the Wings prove they can sustainably move tickets in the AAC, which is staring down a world without an anchor tenant? The Wings alone cannot replace what the Mavs and Stars provide, but they’d be the AAC’s best start possible, especially with the WNBA expanding its schedule to 50 games next year.
Given that, you’ll excuse my eyes for lingering a bit on this quote Wings CEO and managing partner Greg Bibb gave Taylor: “We’re happy with the deal and we’re excited to call American Airlines Center home for ‘27. Beyond ‘27 is still unclear.” Maybe everything goes according to plan. But given how much has changed with the Convention Center and the team’s upcoming practice facility, nothing should be ruled out.
Source: DMN