The Atlanta Dream will host Games 3 and 4 of the WNBA Finals at State Farm Arena, the home of the Atlanta Hawks, the franchise announced Tuesday morning.
Game 3 has been moved from Oct. 22 to Oct. 21. Game 4 still will be held Oct. 24.
The WNBA Finals begin Saturday with the best-of-seven series between the Valkyries and the Dream, with Golden State hosting the first two games. The location of the Dream home games had been undecided as the team wanted to play in a bigger space than the Gateway Center Arena at College Park, which has been its home arena since 2021 and holds just 3,500 fans.
Six of the Dream's regular-season games this season, and all three playoff games, have been played at State Farm, which seats more than 17,000 fans. The arena, however, was booked for a Sombr concert on Oct. 22 and Hawks regular-season games Oct. 24 and 29. Game 3 was moved a day earlier, and the Hawks changed their tipoff against the Houston Rockets from 8 p.m. to 8:30 on Oct. 24. The Valkyries and Dream will tip at 1 p.m. instead of 3:30.
"The ownership of the Atlanta Hawks, Tony Ressler, wanted us to do everything in our power to make it happen because it's great for basketball in Atlanta," Hawks CEO Steve Koonin told ESPN. "It's great for the Dream. It's great for State Farm Arena. We talked to everybody from executives at State Farm to the league to the TV networks, and everyone had major conviction: let's do everything we can to make it happen."
Valkyries owner Joe Lacob said he put "quite a bit of pressure" on the NBA and WNBA commissioners to move the games to State Farm Arena.
"I felt, look, it's not really about us, it's about the league," Lacob said Tuesday in a phone interview with The Associated Press. "The look would not be too good to have Ballhalla (Chase Center) and 18,000 fans here and 3,500 over there. I think it's important for the league to play these games in the Finals, a great championship between two very good teams, in front of the same kind of crowd in both places."
In a statement Tuesday, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the change in venue will ensure that the Dream are able to "provide an extraordinary atmosphere for the first WNBA Finals game to be played in the Atlanta market since 2013."
Dream majority owner Larry Gottesdiener added that this is "what the players and the fans deserve."
The Valkyries initially had their own conflict with Game 2 on Oct. 19. A Doja Cat concert was scheduled that night at Chase Center (capacity 18,064) in San Francisco but has since been moved to Oct. 25.
ESPN's Alexa Philippou contributed to this report.