Dream matchup against Fever offers glimpse into future of team and league

The Dream, of course, isn’t the only team in the WNBA to see growth. The entire league has seen an exponential increase in fan support and television viewership.

In March, ESPN reported that financial services and consulting firm Deloitte projected the revenue generated from women’s sports to reach $2.35 billon globally this year. It projected that women’s basketball on its own would reach $1 billion.

The WNBA announced in September its most-watched regular season in nearly a quarter of a century. The league set an all-time record of more than 54 million unique viewers across its various broadcast partners.

According to the New York Times, this season’s opening matchup between the Fever and the Chicago Sky set a record with an average of 2.7 million viewers tuning in, and the game peaking at 3.1 million watchers.

But it’s not just the viewers on television. It’s the fans filling seats at the arenas. The WNBA last season had its highest attendance in 22 years, with over 2 million fans attending games in person.

With that rapid increase in attention last season, the WNBA went through growing pains as it adjusted not only to the positive fan engagement but also the negative. This season, the league has appeared to address negative fan interaction with players quickly and head-on.

That’s something that new Dream center Brittney Griner said when asked to reflect on how fans have engaged with the league throughout her 12-year WNBA career. But Griner refuses to let the bad outshine the good.

“We have a lot of good fans that are coming to the league,” Griner, a 10-time WNBA All-Star, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We have a lot of little boys that are watching our league, little girls watching our league, and just fans across the board. It’s just growing, and the exposure, and then credit to all the younger players that are coming in now. I say younger players, but they’re adults. Those are those grown women as well and they’re coming in and they’re playing at a standard that is good for our league.

“They’re also opening up and sharing about themselves more coming into the league as well, which is good because we’re more than just basketball players out here. There’s a lot of us out here with some really cool interests and really cool personalities that sometimes get overlooked, and I think now people are getting to see it. And yeah, our fans are growing more.”

The Dream sold out its home exhibition game against the Fever on May 10 at the Gateway Center Arena at College Park and all of its 20 regular-season home games last season. The team announced in January that it had already sold out its full- and half-season ticket memberships, as well as single tickets for four of its 22 home games this season. Dream President and COO Morgan Shaw Parker told the AJC the team has since sold all single tickets for seven other regular-season home games.

With more fans turning out to support the Dream, it’s affirming that the players can connect with the fans, but it also provides extra motivation to compete.

“That feels good,” Griner said. “At the end of the day, we all want to win championships. We all want rings. But at the end of the day, when you walk into an arena and it’s that little fan, that little kid that’s just beaming with joy, just for you to acknowledge them. Yeah, that makes me happy. That makes me want to do better, that makes me want to go harder, be the best player I can out there on the court. I feel like that’s across the board for all of us, honestly. It just makes the job sweeter, for sure.”

The Dream made upgrades when they underwent an ownership change in 2021. The team invested in player health and safety, as well as upgrading facilities, equipment and resources for the athletes. With ownership committing resources across the organization, the Dream can develop into a team that can attract top-tier talent.

They also made investments on the business side by increasing the number of people running operations, going from seven people to 50. The team also plans to open a new headquarters in Midtown next week.

“So, the growth is still happening,” Shaw Parker said. “We’ve got so much further to go, but the growth of the league has absolutely helped in terms of the growth of our team, but also the investment from ownership has really helped put this team on the map.”

In addition to signing Griner in February, the Dream also signed three-time WNBA All-Star Brionna Jones, as well as Shatori Walker-Kimbrough. Those signings come on the heels of the Dream acquiring Jordin Canada last season.

“The support is major,” Griner said. “For us to give a good product, I have to feel safe at work. I have to feel safe when I’m traveling. I have my family there as well, because we’re away so much, and I know with me, especially being a new young parent, I want my wife there. I want my kid there, but I don’t want them there if it’s not safe.

“So, with the league stepping up and letting us charter and having better security, because there was a point where we were too accessible. The fans could get to the court way too easily. And I feel like in the last couple of years, they’ve made a stance on that, as well with (issuing and monitoring) the right credentials and not just letting people go where they want to go. The security aspect, I know, has grown more, and I talk a lot about security because, I mean, it means a lot to me, especially.”

“So it’s good. We want to be valued in every way. We want to be compensated the right way. We want to be protected the right way, and then treated the right way. As far as, like, where we stay on the road, eating, chefs, the food being brought in, however it is, and it’s growing.”

Increased visibility and support don’t just benefit the Dream and the WNBA. It will trickle down and affect the next generation coming up through youth programs, high school programs and college.

“I think we just have such incredible athletes now,” new Georgia Tech women’s basketball coach Karen Blair said. “I mean, if you look at how versatile players have become. I think the W is now starting its 29th season, and just see the different diversity, the positionless basketball that you’re seeing, it’s at such a high level. And that trickles down.”

“Even when you’re looking at high school players to college, and I think it gets attributed to, as these players are able to watch other women. I can go watch Phee (Lynx’s Napheesa Collier), and I’m like, I’m gonna go do this, turn around, fade away, like Phee does. You’re gonna watch how (Aces‘) A’ja (Wilson) runs the floor. And, that’s these are things that you want to be able to emulate. And I think that’s a big piece of the growth of what we’re seeing.”

The WNBA has entered its expansion era, with the Golden State Valkyries tipping off its inaugural season. Two more cities, Toronto and Portland, are slated for teams to begin their seasons in 2026. The league also has multiple bids from groups in Austin, Cleveland, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Nashville, Philadelphia and St. Louis.

The Dream is in the infancy of its own expansion plans. In addition to its headquarters opening in Midtown, the Dream is in the process of building a more permanent headquarters and practice facility for its players. The Dream also has its sights on a bigger home arena but that notion is a little further off.

“We’ve actively partnered with several organizations in the city to look at that and figure out what the City of Atlanta will support, in terms of how big it should be, and where will the City of Atlanta best support it,” Shaw Parker said.

“I mean, we’re pulling together all of our fan heat maps. We’re really having great conversations at the county level, the city level, the state level, and really a setting from a Southeast perspective, where are our fans traveling from? We’ve got fans that fly into our games and drive into our games from 49 states, which is incredible when you think about how hard it is to get to Gateway Arena.”

So, when the Dream take their new statement court under the lights of State Farm Arena, maybe they’ll get a glimpse at what their future games could look like.

“I know we’re gonna have way more fans,” Griner said. “We already have a lot of fans that come and pack out. I mean, our arena is sold out the whole rest of the season. So, for us to have to move over there, because it’s gonna be a bigger game and more people want to come, it shows that we’re trending in the right area.”

“Like, eventually, the goal is to (say), ‘All right, we need to play somewhere bigger because we have that many fans that want to come see us in Atlanta, that we need more seats,’” she added. “So, that means we’re doing the right thing.”