Atlanta's newest professional team played its first downtown matches in March 2025. The Atlanta Vibe, the city's entry in the Pro Volleyball Federation, staged a two-game '404 Match' series at the Georgia State University Convocation Center on Friday, March 28, and Sunday, March 30, 2025 - a nod to the city's area code and a test of whether a team that normally plays in Gwinnett could draw in the city center.
The Vibe launched in the federation's inaugural 2024 season and play their regular home schedule at Gas South Arena in Duluth. The downtown dates were promoted in the March 2025 edition of Be Downtown, the newsletter of Central Atlanta Progress and the Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, as a chance to see 'pro volleyball downtown' in the 8,000-seat arena that Georgia State opened in 2022 on the site of the former Turner Field parking lots in Summerhill.
The Convocation Center has become downtown's mid-size sports venue by default. Too small for the Hawks and too large for most college programs, it has filled its calendar with Georgia State basketball, concerts, and one-off events like the Vibe series, and its location a block from the Rapid A-Line corridor on Hank Aaron Drive made it an early beneficiary of the bus rapid transit line that opened the following year.
Professional women's volleyball has been one of the fastest-growing spectator sports in the country since the federation's debut, and the Vibe's downtown experiment was part of a broader effort by the league's teams to play occasional showcase matches in bigger, more central arenas. Whether it becomes an annual fixture on the downtown sports calendar - alongside the Dream at State Farm Arena and Atlanta United at Mercedes-Benz Stadium - depends on the turnout the 404 Match produced.
Source: Atlanta Vibe (Pro Volleyball Federation); promoted in Be Downtown, March 2025 (Central Atlanta Progress / ADID), published March 2025.
