The Hawks will start their home games at 8:00pm ET in a move "made with information collected over the course of a season," according to Chris Vivlamore of the ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION. The team started games at 7:30pm last year, but Hawks CEO Steve Koonin said, "We try to make every decision data based." Koonin: "Every time you come into the building, we scan your ticket. We know when every ticket got in and we can look for patterns and trends. When our games stated at 7:30 p.m. we would be a little more than half full. When our games started at 8 p.m., we’d be almost 80 percent full." He added a later start time would "help reduce traffic issues and more fans would be in the game for more of the game." Vivlamore reports the team's basketball-operations staff "questioned the later start when the Hawks had back-to-back games with the second being on the road." The Hawks have 19 back-to-back games this season but only three are home-road. Koonin: "We don’t do anything without consulting them. We had a lot of conversations but at the end of the day, they felt like it was a good thing." Koonin said that there has "been better season ticket sales than any other year in the history of the franchise after coming off their 60-win season." He added that the Hawks "lead the NBA in new season ticket holders, a figure he estimated to be nearly 4,000." Meanwhile, a new court "will be unveiled with red and blue no longer being a part of the team’s color scheme" (ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, 8/14).
