After hosting and doing much of the heavy lifting for the NBA All-Star game in 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hawks hope to bring a full-fledged All-Star weekend to Atlanta in 2027, CEO Steve Koonin said in Friday’s episode of the Hawks Report podcast.
They picked that year because they hope it will overlap with when the Centennial Yards project (of which Hawks principal owner Tony Ressler is an investor and the Hawks are a partner) will be “substantially done.” The project will bring apartments, retail options, office spaces and a brewery to downtown, much of it across from State Farm Arena.
The timeline of when specifically the Hawks plan to enter a formal bid and potentially get approval is unclear, since the date is still far in the future. But the Hawks curried favor with the NBA with how they put on a compressed All-Star night under difficult circumstances and with minimal notice, and hope that will help them get approval for 2027.
“We have every intention of cashing that check. ... How wonderful would it be that you can go to a concert over there, you can stay in the fabulous hotels over there, all the restaurants and bars will be open for fans to watch the game or participate in some way,” Koonin said. “So we think 2027 is the ideal timeline, and I’ve let the NBA know that’s where our interest lies.”
All-Star 2027 in Atlanta, if the NBA approves, would be a much grander affair than in 2021, when the game wasn’t open to the general public because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Atlanta made sense as the host site in 2021, given that Turner Broadcasting wouldn’t have to travel out-of-state for the game and the Hawks already had the infrastructure in place to host a limited capacity of fans.
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