Going back to the WNBA’s inception, synergy between the Bulls and the league has been hard to come by .
Despite insistence from Hall of Fame commissioner David Stern and Val Ackerman, the WNBA’s first president, that Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf could be the keeper of basketball in Chicago year round, he had no interest. So, eight years after the league’s inaugural season, Michael Alter and a group of local investors brought the WNBA to the Windy City.
Unlike a number of other WNBA teams — the Fever, Lynx, Liberty, Mercury, Mystics and Valkyries — the Sky have never been affiliated with an NBA counterpart. But in the nearly two decades since the Sky’s inaugural season, the relationship between them and one of the NBA’s most recognizable brands has grown, mainly from an individual standpoint, with players making appearances at each other’s games.
A considerable step was taken in establishing a collaborative relationship between the two franchises with news that the Sky’s two home games against the Fever will be played at the United Center, home of the Bulls. The first game on June 7 will be the first time a WNBA game is played at the arena. The second, initially scheduled for July 26, will now be played July 27 with a 2 p.m. tipoff.
“It’s one thing for us to play there,” Sky CEO and President Adam Fox told the Sun-Times. “It’s another thing for the United Center to have us play there. The most important thing is that there is a demand and interest to have us play there and to make it a worthwhile and big time event that it deserves to be.”
The demand has already been exemplified by the urgency from season ticket holders to ensure their tickets will be honored. Fox said the Sky’s ticket representatives began fielding emails and phone calls immediately after the team issued its press release. The process of partnering with the United Center included ensuring seats for season ticket holders were as approximate to their seats at Wintrust Arena as possible.
Tickets will go on sale March 11. Season ticket holders will already have their seats secured by then, Fox said.
The Sky had discussions about moving games to the United Center last season, including the Aug. 30 game against the Fever. Scheduling conflicts prevented plans from being finalized. Conversations picked back up in the offseason to finalize a partnership that Fox is hopeful will continue beyond the 2025 season.
“I can’t say that it will be against Indiana every year,” Fox said. “With the influx of people coming into the league, who knows who the next person will be. We’ll be paying close attention to all of that. If all of this goes as well as we think it will, there’s no reason why we wouldn’t look to make games at the United Center an annual thing.”
The person drawing enough attention to open ticket sales up to a 20,917-person arena is the Fever’s Caitlin Clark. The Fever’s 2024 regular season finale against the Mystics set a WNBA single-season attendance record with 20,711 fans. According to Across the Timeline, the Fever set a WNBA attendance record in 2024 with nearly 504,000 fans attending home and away games. The Liberty were second in attendance with 351,000 fans and the Sky were sixth with 298,000 fans.
The Fever’s attendance numbers in 2024 can be attributed to a number of teams moving their games to larger arenas. The Sky also had games against the Mystics and Aces moved to larger arenas in 2024. Their 90-71 loss to the Aces on Sept. 3 last season at T-Mobile Arena was their highest attended game with 18,394 fans.
Sky stars Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso were the catalysts for a jump in the franchise’s ticket sales in 2024. According to Across the Timeline, the Sky’s average home attendance jumped from 7,241 in 2023 to 8,757 in 2024. The Fever’s average home attendance skyrocketed from 4,066 in 2023 to 17,035 in 2024, further pointing to Clark’s impact.
The Sky will look to break their largest single-game attendance record set on July 13, 2016, against the Sparks in front of 16,444 fans at Allstate Arena.