Emanuel

Welp, time for an Andrew rant because I’m incensed by this finals situation. To be clear, I have no sourcing on this, and these are my opinions on a situation of two teams(GS,ATL) that I don’t cover. So let’s get this all out in one spot, the WNBA are choosing to play a game at 12:30PM(9:30AM pacific) so that they can sell 14,000 more tickets at State Farm arena… then in almost every press release mention they “had to” because the Hawks play the second game of a back to back… To be clear -The Dream have their own arena, which according to the arena schedule had nothing going on Thursday evening. -The NBA schedule and WNBA playoff schedule have been out for months and this could have been figured out in September. -This isn’t a Hawks problem to solve, they don’t share venues or owners. Because of this the game will be on USA, SyFy, and E competing with day-time soap operas. The League is choosing to have a close out game 6 for the first championship in Valkyries history to be played at 9:30AM for their fans, and to have Angel Reese defend the Dream home court at 12:30PM… To pull the curtain back all the TV contracts for playoffs are already set in stone, the league technically doesn’t make any extra money based off the ratings, so financially, the league isn’t going to be hurt by this decision. In fact they are likely going to make 250,00 extra bucks from ticket sales for the extra 14,000 seats. The primary owner of the Atlanta Dream has an estimated net worth of 8 billion dollars. ———— For the Valkyries fans, and the Dream fans, and all WNBA fans… they get to use a sick day or their PTO to watch the game in person, or sneak it on their lunch break, play it back on replay, or just miss the game. The bars get to lose the revenue from a hometown team being in the finals. The reporters get to be rushed out of an arena post game and likely lose a ton of access The Valkeryies players get to celebrate on a practice court if they win the championship All for what, 250,000k…. It’s literally insulting to all the players, fans, reporters, team employees, and people that pour so much time and effort into growing a game for a league and a team to value 250k in ticket rev over offering a prime time game and growing the game.