Owners of the Houston Rockets are progressing in talks to purchase the Connecticut Sun and relocate the WNBA franchise, ESPN reported Friday.<\/p>\n
No formal offer has \u200dbeen made, and the two parties have not entered an exclusivity agreement, per the report. At the same time, Sun owners haven\u2019t made a firm decision about the future of the franchise.<\/p>\n
Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta has expressed an interest in a franchise, but Houston \u200cwas passed over when the WNBA announced \u200cin June that it was adding teams in Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia between 2028 and 2030.<\/p>\n
The WNBA will have 15 teams when it expands to Portland and Toronto in 2026.<\/p>\n
ESPN reported that commissioner \u200bCathy Engelbert told Fertitta that Houston would be \u201cup next.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sun are owned by the Mohegan Tribe, which purchased the \u200dformer Orlando Miracle ahead of \u200bthe 2003 season for $10 million. In May, the \u200bfranchise hired New York investment firm Allen & Co. to explore selling \u200dand relocating the Sun.<\/p>\n
In July, the Sun sent a letter to fans saying the team would play at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville, Conn., for at least another season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know there has been a lot of conversation in \u200dthe media about the future of the team, but please know that we will be playing the 2026 season here at \u200dMohegan Sun Arena,\u201d \u200dread the memo, according to The Hartford Courant.<\/p>\n
A \u200bsale could bring a windfall to the \u200btribe. \u2060ESPN reported June 30 that the expansion fee \u200cfor owners bringing teams to Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia is $250 million.<\/p>\n
The Sun have never won a WNBA title but have lost four times in the league finals, most recently in 2022.<\/p>\n
In the 2025 season, they finished in 11th place in the WNBA at \u206011-33.<\/p>\n
\u2013Field Level Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Owners of the Houston Rockets are progressing in talks to purchase the Connecticut Sun and relocate the WNBA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-359704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}