Inside the scramble that moved Thursday’s WNBA Finals game to 12:30 p.m. ET

Moving Game 6 of the WNBA finals to a 12:30 p.m. ET time slot on Thursday puts a spotlight on a league that’s ready for a bigger stage — even if the bigger stages aren’t always ready for the WNBA.

Game 6 between the Atlanta Dream and the Golden State Valkyries will be played Thursday at 12:30 p.m. ET/9:30 a.m. PT — a shocking time for a finals elimination game. A Golden State win would give them the series, 4-2. A Dream win would send the series back to Golden State for Game 7 on Saturday, Oct. 31.

Earlier this week, it became clear there was a good chance the series was going to run into a timing problem for Game 6. The Dream has been playing its playoff games at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, the home of the Atlanta Hawks, which seats 17,000. State Farm will be the permanent home for the Dream beginning next season.

Game 6 presented an issue — the Hawks also are playing at State Farm tonight. The Dream plays its regular-season games at Gateway Center Arena, which seats just 3,500 people.

Earlier this week, a multiparty discussion began between the teams’ ownership groups, WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Atlanta Hawks CEO Steve Koonin, and Versant, which owns the Game 6 media rights. All parties began brainstorming ideas about where and when to play the game.

The Dream and Hawks have different ownership. The Dream put out an open letter Tuesday saying it had raised concerns about potentially conflicting games two months ago to the WNBA, and that those concerns were ignored. Sources close to the league said it’s the team’s responsibility to secure an arena in case of conflict. Playoff dates were issued by the league in Dec. 2025.

The Dream never secured another arena to play the game other than Gateway. The NBA was brought in to help problem-solve just days ago, according to two people familiar with the matter. The WNBA has its own scheduling division separate from the NBA. 

Earlier this week, the teams, the league, and Versant executives began throwing out solutions. Many different ones were considered, including moving the Hawks game to a different time, keeping the game at Gateway and playing a Game 6 in front of 3,500 people. They also weighed moving Game 6 to Wednesday, Friday, or Saturday at State Farm and then moving Game 7 in San Francisco, or finding another local arena for the game.

All options involving shifting the day had problems. The Hawks also played Wednesday. USA Network already had WWE’s Friday Night SmackDown during the Friday primetime TV slot and the Breeders’ Cup on Saturday afternoon. State Farm had a concert featuring rapper-singer Young Miko already on the schedule for Saturday night. Moving Game 7 to Tuesday would bump up against Election Day.

The Hawks game couldn’t be moved to 12:30 p.m. ET given existing NBA collective bargaining agreement rules, which don’t allow teams to play games without a 22-hour break. Both the Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers play tonight at 7 p.m. ET.

There was even discussion of moving the Hawks game to another month, but given the density of the NBA schedule, too many other teams’ schedules would also need to shift for this to be feasible, according to people familiar with the matter. 

Both teams and their players did not want to play at Gateway, given the importance of the game — a sentiment echoed by Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr this week, who said moving the game was “better than having it at the YMCA.”

Both teams felt uncomfortable playing the game at a non-professional basketball arena such as Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Atlanta Falcons play, due to potential safety concerns and lack of familiarity with the venue, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Dream has been selling out State Farm and has already sold out today’s game. Golden State plays its games at San Francisco’s Chase Center, which has seating for 18,000 fans. The atmosphere for the Valkyries’ games throughout the playoffs has been on par with almost any NBA Finals game. Golden State calls its arena “Ballhalla.”

Versant initially favored keeping the game at Gateway to maximize primetime viewership, according to people familiar with the matter. A skilled sports TV production team can make a game with only 3,500 fans seem much bigger — and louder — to a television audience. 

Moving the game to 12:30 p.m. ET will likely lead to an audience loss in the hundreds of thousands, according to two media executives who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from the league. Game 2 averaged 1.33 million viewers on USA Network and Peacock. Game 6 in primetime would almost certainly have averaged more.

This is the background to what led to moving the game time. The game will air on USA and two other Versant networks, E! and Syfy. It will also be rebroadcast at 8 p.m. ET — its original start time — on USA Network and CNBC.  

Still, it’s possible the amount of attention this scheduling shift has gotten in recent days could boost awareness of the game. “The daytime window isn’t perfect from a TV audience perspective, but the league had to make a really difficult decision taking a lot into account across multiple stakeholders,” a USA Network spokesperson said. “What was important to us was to ultimately be a good partner and to be part of the solution here.”

Disclosure: CNBC, USA Network, E! and Syfy are divisions of Versant Media.