Less than 24 hours after Angel Reese was traded from the Chicago Sky to the Atlanta Dream on Tuesday, the Dream are already beginning to feel the impact.
The Dream have ranked last in WNBA home attendance for the past three seasons, largely due to the 3,500-seat arena they’ve played in since 2020.
In women’s basketball, though, a single star can move the needle. Reese’s presence was immediately apparent this week.
- According to data from TickPick, the get-in price for Atlanta’s May 17 home opener against the Las Vegas Aces at the State Farm Arena went from $38 to $68 in the hours after the trade.
- Tickets for the Dream’s home opener in College Park are even more expensive, starting at $198 on TickPick for a May 22 contest against Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings.
- Just 26 minutes after news of the Reese trade broke Monday morning, the Dream put her jersey on sale. As of 4 p.m. Eastern on Monday, the jerseys were sold out in all sizes.
- Atlanta also saw a big social media bump—going from around 275,900 Instagram followers on Monday to 299,000 as of Wednesday morning. During the same period, the Sky’s follower count dropped from around 584,700 to 572,000.
Notably, other teams have moved to bigger arenas for Reese’s Sky team in the past.
Ahead of the 2025 season, the Washington Mystics moved a game against the Sky from CageFirst Arena to the larger EagleBank Arena. The Dream have scheduled five 2026 games at State Farm Arena, the 17,000-seat NBA arena where the Hawks play. That includes a Sept. 19 Sky game in addition to two games against Caitlin Clark’s Indiana Fever, one against the Aces and one against the Toronto Tempo.
The Dream could move even more games to State Farm. Both the Dream and the Mystics moved games against the Fever to larger arenas after the 2024 season began.
Dream president and COO Morgan Shaw Parker told local Atlanta TV station WSB-TV that there is “nearly 100% positive fan sentiment across every social media, every media outlet” over Reese’s arrival. In a city that lost a major basketball name in Trae Young, Reese’s star power could fill a vacuum.
“Our fans have basically said there could be no better move than to bring her in with this team,” Shaw Parker said. “We couldn’t be more excited. She fits in with the Atlanta culture like no other.”
Reese isn’t the first WNBA star to leave the Sky, a team she expressed her frustration with during the 2025 season. Hall of Famers Sylvia Fowles and Elena Delle Donne requested trades from the team, while Candace Parker chose to leave just two seasons after winning a title in Chicago.
Now it’s up to Atlanta to capitalize on Reese’s arrival. The early results seem to suggest that it is.
