Published March 10, 2024
NBA confirms All-Star Game to be played in Phoenix
NBA confirms All-Star Game to be played in Phoenix
The Phoenix Suns will host the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in 2027, the league announced March 7.
Downtown Phoenix will be home to several events surrounding the NBA’s All-Star Game with Footprint Center and the Phoenix Convention Center already tapped as venues for several events.
The announcement comes on the heels of initial reports in February that the Suns were finalizing the deal to host the event with the NBA.
“The key to All-Star is all the activations from corporate sponsors, from ourselves, from the NBA. It’ll have almost a festival feel, where we'll have a lot of things inside and outside [the arena,]” Suns CEO Josh Bartelstein told the Business Journal. “We'll make it all experiential so for our fans and those coming here to Phoenix, there’ll always be something to do.”
The Suns are in the process of building a new headquarters for its employees and will use the space of the current offices in the downtown Phoenix arena for fan interactions. Bartelstein said that project will be done by the time the All-Star Game is played.
This will mark the fourth time the NBA All-Star Game has been played in Phoenix, with the most recent being in 2009.
Suns, NBA look for corporate sponsors, partners
Starting now and heading up to the event in 2027, Bartelstein said the Suns will be working with NBA to secure sponsors and corporate partners for the All-Star Game and associated events.
The Suns have been talking about hosting an All-Star Game again since 2019, when the team and the city of Phoenix, which owns Footprint Center, decided to renovate the downtown Phoenix arena. Renovations costs more than $240 million, with about $150 million of that coming from the city of Phoenix.
Suns owner Mat Ishbia, who acquired the team in 2023, said one of his first goals as team owner was to have the Suns and the Phoenix Mercury host the NBA and WNBA All-Star games. The 2024 WNBA All-Star Game will be played in July in Phoenix.
Bartelstein and Ishbia have said they plan on making the upcoming WNBA All-Star game “the best ever,” and intend to follow a similar plan for the 2027 event.
“For the NBA, it will be the same objective and goals – to make it the best ever,” Bartelstein said. “We'll be really creative and really detail oriented to make sure we put on an amazing show because it's a whole weekend celebration of the best players in the world coming to Phoenix and the business of basketball.”
The NBA just recently wrapped up its latest All-Star Weekend, which was held in Indianapolis. In 2025, the NBA All-Star Weekend is set for San Francisco and in 2026 it will be hosted by the Los Angeles Clippers in L.A.
NBA All-Star Games not only bring thousands of people to the host cities, generating millions of dollars in economic impact, but the broadcast of the games and media coverage around them add as a commercial for host city and an economic, sports and tourism destination.
