Wintrust Arena

McCormick Square is the convention-and-arena district immediately south of the South Loop, bordered by Chinatown to the west, the Motor Row historic district along Michigan Avenue, and the lakefront and Burnham Park to the east. It's a working district rather than a traditional bar-and-restaurant strip — the pre-game scene fans out either north into the South Loop and Printer's Row, west into Chinatown for dim sum and noodles, or further north into the West Loop's restaurant row. The Green Line and CTA buses make each direction quick. Motor Row, the historic auto-dealership corridor a few blocks north, has slowly added breweries and music venues over the past decade and is the closest emerging walkable scene to the arena itself.

Arrive 60 minutes before tipoff — Wintrust Arena is a compact 10,000-seat venue with relatively few entry points, and Sky games in the post-2024 WNBA surge (Angel Reese era) regularly run near capacity with longer-than-expected security lines. The Green Line at Cermak-McCormick Place is the easiest car-free option and drops you within a 5-minute walk. Mobile-only ticketing and cashless concessions are standard. The Sky share the building with DePaul Blue Demons men's basketball during the college season — check tenant scheduling because gate procedures and concourse layout can vary. The Sky publish current bag and entry policy on the team's official site — confirm before traveling.

Wintrust Arena opened in October 2017 as the Wintrust Arena, named for the Chicago-based Wintrust Financial Corporation under a long-term naming-rights deal. The roughly 10,387-seat venue was built on the McCormick Place convention campus south of the South Loop, partly to give the convention complex an event-anchor and partly to give DePaul University men's basketball a downtown on-campus-adjacent home after years of playing at Allstate Arena in the suburbs. The Chicago Sky moved in as full-time WNBA tenants and won the 2021 WNBA Championship — the franchise's first title — early in the building's tenancy. The intimate scale, downtown-adjacent location, and dual NCAA / WNBA calendar make Wintrust one of the more distinctive women's pro basketball homes in the league, particularly during the post-2024 WNBA surge driven by the Caitlin Clark / Angel Reese rookie classes and continued league expansion (Golden State Valkyries 2025, Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire 2026).