Atlanta United will play at Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium while new venue is finished
Atlanta United will play the first games in the club's history at Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium because their permanent home, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, will still be under construction when the MLS season starts in March 2017. The club decided they would rather start at a temporary home instead of playing a slew of road games to open the season until Mercedes-Benz Stadium is ready in June.
Other MLS teams have had to wait until June for stadiums to open before and most have opted to play exclusively road games to start the season so they could play all of their home games in their own venue. Toronto FC did that the last two seasons, while BMO Field underwent extensive renovations, and Sporting Kansas City and the LA Galaxy are among the other teams that have done the same before. That was an option for Atlanta United, but club president Darren Eales cited competitive reasons for their decision not to and confirmed that newly hired manager Gerardo Martino gave his blessing on the temporary home.
"Our aim is to build a championship caliber soccer club and to be as competitive as we can from the start," said Darren Eales, president of Atlanta United.
"With the amount of excitement we've seen for the club, especially over the past few months as our season ticket sales have continued to rise, it was evident that playing at home for the first part of the season was in the best interest of our fans and our players.
Atlanta United's lease for Bobby Dodd Stadium runs through July, just in case construction is slowed for any reason and the team can't play there in June. The good news is, like Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Bobby Dodd Stadium is also downtown so it won't be a major difference for fans trying to get to matches.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium will be a 71,000-seat stadium that can artificially lower capacity to 30,000 for Atlanta United. With over 22,000 season tickets sold, that looks like the perfect size venue for the club. Bobby Dodd Stadium seats 55,000 and it's unclear whether Atlanta United will sell up to that capacity or limit sales to 30,000.
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