Steve Pagliuca is set to leave the Boston Celtics ownership group. But he’s reportedly set to bring another professional basketball team to Boston.
According to the Boston Globe, an ownership group led by Pagliuca has reached a deal with the Mohegan Tribe to purchase the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun and move the team to TD Garden.
According to the Globe, Pagliuca’s group will pay $325 million for the team plus another $100 million to move the team and put together new training facilities.
The Globe notes that the price tag is the highest ever for a women’s sports franchise.
The Sun currently play their games at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, but the Sun have played select games at TD Garden, taking advantage of the Celtics arena’s higher capacity.
There is a caveat, however.
“A potential sale must be approved by the WNBA and the league’s governors, and according to a source, the WNBA would rather save Boston as a potential expansion city in 2033,” Gary Washburn writes. “A WNBA source said if the league forces the Mohegan Tribe to sell to a Connecticut-based buyer to keep the team in the state, which it has the power to do, Mohegan will cooperate, but the Tribe’s choice is to sell to the Boston-based group.”
Pagliuca is a minority governor of the Celtics and was one of the major bidders to purchase the team when the Wyc Grousbeck group put the team up for sale. Instead, Bill Chisholm led a group that purchased the team for $6.1 billion.
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