The Connecticut Sun logo and the Mohegan Sun Arena logo are seen before a WNBA game between the Atlanta Dream and the Connecticut Sun on September 10, 2025, at Mohegan Sun Arena.
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An 11-month effort to save the Connecticut Sun of the WNBA as the state’s only major league professional sports franchise has ended in failure with a tentative deal that would move the team to Houston.
The Mohegan Tribe has tentatively agreed to sell the women’s basketball team for $300 million to the owner of the Houston Rockets of the NBA, a source familiar with the negotiations said Friday. The deal had not officially been signed as of Friday evening.
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Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, a billionaire restaurant and gaming entrepreneur and currently the U.S. ambassador to Italy is the buyer, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal has not yet been publicly announced by the two sides. The news was first reported by Paper City Magazine.
It’s been expected this result was coming since late fall when the league shot down a deal that was in the works to keep the team in Connecticut. Still, this stings a state whose governor calls it the Basketball Capital of the World based on the UConn teams’ success.
A move to Texas could happen in 2027 after a near-certain approval of the deal by the WNBA and the NBA, which effectively controls the women’s league.
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A small consolation: The Sun are scheduled to play the 2026 season in Connecticut. Most games will be at Mohegan Sun Arena at the tribe’s casino in Uncasville but the PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford will host two, including a July 2 matchup against former UConn superstar Paige Bueckers and the Dallas Wings – likely Bueckers’ last Connecticut appearance in a game that counts.
The WNBA has made it clear that the league, not the teams’ owners, controls where teams are to be located, whether through expansion or sale. Houston has been the presumed destination for the Sun ever since June 30, 2025 when the WNBA commissioner said the league would like to see a team in that city, under the Rockets ownership – statements reported by the Houston Chronicle at the time.
It’s unclear whether the team will adopt the Houston Comets name. That team dominated the WNBA in its early years, winning the first four league championships in 1997-2000 before folding in 2008 when no buyer stepped up.
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This time around, with growth in TV revenues and an expanding fan base, WNBA teams are in great demand, as expansion franchises pay a $250 million fee. Seeing that growth, the WNBA players union just resolved a salary contract battle with the league that will bring sharply higher pay and other benefits.
For Connecticut, the loss of the Sun, among the WNBA’s more successful franchises on the court and at the ticket gate, brings a fresh blow. The state saw the old Hartford Whalers of the National Hockey League exit for North Carolina after the 1997 season, along with many corporate headquarters in the years since then.
But unlike those departures, the owner should receive little or no blame from hometown fans as the Sun prepare to move. The tribe’s business arm, known simply as Mohegan, announced last April it was “exploring options” for the team and had hired a consultant, which in corporate-speak generally means a sale.
Mohegan reached a tentative deal last summer to sell to a Boston-based group for $325 million, multiple news outlets reported. That would have meant a move of the team to Massachusetts. That transaction fell through after the league issued a statement saying it, and not the owners, holds the power to determine where teams move – and Boston had not sought and received league approval for a WNBA team.
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Mohegan then reached a similar, tentative deal to sell to a Connecticut-based group led by billionaire Marc Lasry to keep the team in the state. Gov. Ned Lamont agreed to build a state-owned practice facility for about $100 million near Hartford; games would be at PeoplesBank Arena.
Nothing doing, the WNBA and NBA said. The leagues made it clear behind closed doors they would not allow a move even within the state.
What happened next, in the late summer and early fall, boggles the mind and makes the loss of the Sun all the more bitter for Connecticut.
Eager to do right by its home state, Mohegan agreed to sell only a partial share of the team, about 30 percent, for about $100 million, to investors recruited by Lamont and Daniel O’Keefe, the state’s economic development chief, sources told me. Lamont also floated the possibility of using money from the state pension funds to buy a share of the team, raising political objections.
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Financing aside, a partial-share sale would keep the home arena at Mohegan Sun, with the state building and owning the badly needed practice facility.
How could the league reject that option, especially with private investors? It would mean no move of the team and no change in the majority ownership by Mohegan. Well, it did exactly that. Before the state and Mohegan announced a deal, league officials told the parties privately that it would not accept it, the sources said.
We will never know what would have happened if Lamont and Mohegan had forced the issue, publicly announcing a deal with private investors and forcing the WNBA and NBA to reject it. The threat of a lawsuit by the state would have made for a colorful standoff that Connecticut might well have won.
Alas, we will never know.
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The Mohegan Tribe bought the Sun for $10 million in 2003 and moved the team from Orlando. Mohegan and the Connecticut Sun, under UConn basketball legend Jennifer Rizzotti as president, now have one last, longshot chance at claiming the title in a league that has outgrown this small-market state.
This column is developing and will be updated.
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