Two weeks ago, news broke that former Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca had agreed to a deal with the Mohegan Tribe to buy the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun for $325 million, with plans in place to relocate the team to Boston within two years. While the team’s outgoing and incoming ownership groups were happy with the arrangement, the WNBA was not. The league, which released a frosty statement at the time, clearly had another idea in mind to resolve the Sun’s situation.
A new report from ESPN’s Alexa Philippou and Ramona Shelburne offers a ton of interesting details showing how the league plans to manage expansion over the coming decade. While a franchise sale in any major North American professional sport has to be approved by some constituency of the other owners, it’s rare for a league to step in like this and publicly oppose a proposed deal, especially for a record-breaking price. The WNBA did so because any sale of the Sun likely means some form of relocation to a larger market, and the league would like to have as direct a hand as possible in steering the team’s direction. Pagliuca led one of the groups that lost out in the recent sale of the Celtics, and while his proposal did not mention Boston specifically, he hasn’t been subtle about his desire to move the team there and spend $100 million on a new practice facility. The city has hosted two sold-out Sun games in the past two years, both of which WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has attended.
The Mohegan Tribe has operated the Sun since relocating the team from Orlando in 2003, and they want two things from the sale: as much money as possible, and to keep the team in New England. The latter isn’t exactly up to them. After the tribe began to explore the possibility of a sale last season, the WNBA reportedly asked them to let Dan Gilbert’s incoming Cleveland group submit a bid before opening up the sale to everyone. The theory there was that moving the Sun to Cleveland, which ultimately wound up with one of the expansion slots and will have a team starting in the 2028 season, would free up another new city for the league. That city is obviously Houston, which has a rich WNBA history with the Comets’ dynasty, and is the largest city in the United States without a team in the league. But the Sun declined the Gilbert bid, as well as a $250 million offer from the WNBA, which would let it flip the team to the Houston ownership group.
Per ESPN, the WNBA sent a series of letters advising the Sun that the board of governors would have to approve any sale, and that the team is now allowed “to change the playing site of the Team’s home games from Mohegan Sun Arena or to conduct any Team operations outside of the Team Member’s Territory (which is defined as the 75-mile area surrounding Montville, Connecticut and does not include Boston).” Boston makes a ton of sense for WNBA expansion, as does simply allowing the Sun to relocate nearby. However, the league’s issue with Pagliuca’s bid is that Boston did not formally file for an expansion slot, a rather disingenuous concern, given that there is already a New England-based WNBA team clearly about to get sold.
ESPN also reported that while Boston expansion is possible down the road, the league would prefer that incoming Celtics owner Bill Chisholm be given the team. That shows the degree to which the league prioritizes its ties to the NBA, as the owners of the Warriors, Raptors, Cavs, Pistons, and 76ers also own their cities’ WNBA teams. Only the incoming Portland ownership group led by the Bhathal family is unaffiliated with the local NBA team, though they own the Portland Thorns and have invested in the Sacramento Kings (not a name anyone wants to be associated with).
That’s not really the Mohegan Tribe’s problem. Caught between two eras of the WNBA, they’re within their rights to sell the team, and while the league can be disgruntled and block a sale, it can’t make the Tribe accept a lowball offer just so Engelbert can stage-manage the relocation. The current options, per ESPN, include a full sale to the Pagliuca group, a partial sale of equity in the team, a sale to former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry (who wants to move the team to Hartford, Conn., which the league has already said it would oppose), or a sale to the league for the full $325 million instead of $250 million. The Tribe doesn’t want to be bullied into taking less than market value. And so, while other WNBA franchises invest more money in better facilities and resources, the negotiations drag on in Uncasville.
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