The increasingly contentious sale of the Connecticut Sun WNBA team isn’t quite a stadium or arena story, not just yet, but it may yet get there, and it’s so weird that it’s worth looking at anyway, so let’s dive in. The story so far:
- 2003: The Orlando Miracle are purchased by the Mohegan Indian Tribe and relocated to Uncasville, Connecticut, to be the primary tenant of the arena at the tribe’s Mohegan Sun casino.
- May 2025: Mohegan Sun hires an investment bank to put the Sun franchise up for sale, because apparently the casino doesn’t need a primary tenant anymore as badly as it could use the proceeds from selling a now-valuable WNBA team.
- August 2, 2025: Boston Celtics minority owner (and chair of Bain Capital, which formerly took over a South Korean casino resort after Mohegan defaulted on it) Steve Pagliuca reached a deal to buy the Sun for $325 million and move the team to Boston, where the team would play in TD Garden with the Celtics and Pagliuca would build a new $100 million practice facility.
- August 4, 2025: Former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry said he was also preparing a $300 million–plus bid for the Sun, and would move the team to Hartford’s arena.
- August 5, 2025: The WNBA declared that cities that had bid for expansion teams would get first dibs on relocating teams as well, and since “no groups from Boston applied for a team,” cities that lost out on expansion bids — which could include Houston, Charlotte, St. Louis, Kansas City, Austin, Nashville, Miami, and Denver — “have priority over Boston.” The same would go for Hartford, which likewise didn’t submit an expansion bid.
This is … nuts? I’m going to go with nuts. Hartford and Boston didn’t bid for an expansion franchise for obvious reasons: New England already has an WNBA team, which is the Sun. (It’s about a 45-minute drive from Uncasville to Hartford; Boston is more like an hour and a half.) Even calling a move from Mohegan Sun to Hartford a “relocation” feels like a stretch: When the New York Liberty moved from Madison Square Garden to White Plains and then to Brooklyn those were arguably more significant moves, but nobody at the league suggested that the team be put up for bid to move to Austin or Nashville.
While I have no inside information, the three most likely explanations seem to be that either: 1) the WNBA is trying to assert its control over where its teams play, possibly in order to extract the biggest bids in terms of sale price and arena offers (there’s the Field of Schemes content you’ve been waiting for!), 2) the WNBA is hoping to keep the Sun in Connecticut somehow somewhere while also adding a Boston franchise (as the Boston Globe reported could happen, citing a “WNBA source”) or 3) someone in WNBA leadership really doesn’t like Pagliuca for some unknown reason. In the meantime, Sun president (and former UConn and New England Blizzard star) Jennifer Rizzotti says the team will remain in Uncasville for the 2026 season, while we wait to see who if anyone gets to steal the Sun.
“Hey, this is an unprecedented era of popularity for our sport and our league. Let’s step on a rake.” —- WNBA leadership, apparently
Well… sorting through the chaff a bit, isn’t it most likely that this is a (bit of a hamfisted) shot across the bow of Pagliuca?
He may think he can move the team unilaterally – and he would certainly not be the first prospective owner to think if he spends enough on buying it he earns enough goodwill/threat of tortious interference lawsuit blowback that he can do so.
However, unless the WNBA has significantly different franchise conditional purchase rules than all other sports leagues do post-Raiders II, I don’t think he can.
Shocking as it is to think the head of Bain Capital would even consider bullying his way around rules of operation, I believe he will be disappointed if he thinks he can pull this off.
If I were in the WNBA office (ok, if I were employed there in some meaningful capacity) I think I would have recommended they just wait until he announces he is moving to Boston and then issue an invoice for the relocation fee… which I would assume would also be in the hundreds of millions (given the value of the current market in Uncasville would be, um, limited).
“Congratulations, dummy, you just overpaid for a franchise and now have to pay for an expansion franchise as well… good work.”
I just find it funny that Pagliuca is paying slightly less for a WNBA team as he did for the Celtics back in 2002.
You are not alone there. Not as funny as what money losing MLS teams are trading for, but still hilarious.
I wonder if the WNBA is afraid of a lawsuit from one the ownership groups from the jilted cities if another market got to jump the line without going through the process. Total speculation though.
There has been plenty of franchise movement in the WNBA in the past… but certainly no league wants to be forced/coerced into opening its books in discovery during a meaningless lawsuit I guess.
While I happen to disagree with the decision, courts have regularly ruled in favour of leagues being able to determine the locations of their franchises more or less at their discretion.
TD Garden is owned 100% by the Bruins. There have been some noises about the Celtics building their own arena.
Delaware North owns TD Garden, not the Bruins or Jeremy Jacobs individually.