Come 2026, the Dallas Wings will have a larger, newly renovated home stadium in Dallas. After a unanimous city council vote to relocate the team from Arlington to Dallas, the Wings will call Dallas Memorial Auditorium at Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center home for at least 15 years. Since moving to DFW from Tulsa in 2016, the franchise has played home games at College Park Center at UTA.
After the city renovates Memorial Auditorium as part of the 10-year redevelopment of Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Wings President and CEO Greg Bibb expects the team to have a home with about 2,000 more seats than it currently has in Arlington. “At a conservative price of about $40 a ticket, spread out over 40,000 additional seats a year for home games, we’re talking about at least $1.5 million more in ticket revenue a year,” he said.
Riding the wave of a boom in women’s sports, especially women’s basketball, the Wings have seen ticket sales spike. Year to date, the Wings are up 173 percent on season ticket sales, 347 percent on flex-plan ticket sales, 683 percent on group ticket sales, and 1,221 percent on individual ticket sales. Total ticket revenue is up 222 percent. “We will set individual game revenue records this year, we’ll set total ticket revenue records this year, and we’ll set records for every product we sell this year,” Bibb said.
The redevelopment process is still in its earliest stages, and renderings are still a ways off, but Bibb said, “We’re creating a practice facility that is on par with any NBA facility out there. From an arena perspective, we’re envisioning a venue providing all of the hospitality, amenities, and technology you see in a best-of-class arena today.” The Wings could be allotted a nearby space in the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for its practice facility, but details are still being ironed out.
According to Bibb, Dallas officials first expressed interest in bringing the WNBA franchise to the city two seasons ago. “Mayor Eric Johnson and the city had a vision about where women’s sports were going and where the Dallas Wings were going long before a lot of people hopped on the women’s basketball bandwagon,” Bibb said.
As part of the move, the Wings will receive a $19 million incentive package, but contractual details of how the payments will be installed are still to be determined.
“Picking up a business that’s been in the same place for eight years and a business that has continued to grow is risky,” Bibb said. “And anytime you pick up a professional sports organization and move it, even in a situation like this, in which the move is all of 21 miles, there is a risk involved. So those incentive dollars help the team mitigate those risks.”
Bibb was unwilling to discuss whether the team would redesign uniforms or introduce a new logo to coincide with the relocation. Still, he did say, “There’s always change, we’re always evolving, we’re always growing, and we’re always trying to get better.”
The Wings are a top-four revenue-producing team in the WNBA. “When we started [the Wings relocated from Tulsa to Dallas in 2016], pick the business metric, we were at the bottom of the barrel,” Bibb said. Pick the business metric now, and we’re at the top. I liken it to turning the Bad News Bears into the New York Yankees.”
Memorial Auditorium was originally constructed in 1957. The last time it was renovated was 2002. The arena was once home to the Dallas Chaparrals of the American Basketball Association, a franchise that later became the San Antonio Spurs. The venue also hosted the Beatles’ first North American tour.
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