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The Connecticut Sun logo and the\u00a0Mohegan Sun Arena logo are seen before a WNBA game between the Atlanta Dream and the Connecticut Sun on September 10, 2025. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is calling for a federal probe into the team’s impending move to Houston.<\/p>\n
Icon Sportswire\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/p>\n
It’s a basketball longshot that could make Braylon Mullins’ buzzer-beater knocking Duke out of the\u00a0NCAA tournament look like a\u00a0layup.<\/p>\n
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As he vowed last week<\/a> he would do, and as I reported, Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Monday he has formally asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the pending sale of the Connecticut Sun WNBA basketball team to the owner of the Houston Rockets of the NBA. The $300 million agreement, <\/a>all but certain to receive approval by the WNBA, violates federal laws that bar anti-competitive activity, Blumenthal said.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n “The WNBA has rigged the bidding. It has rigged the process to force the Connecticut Sun to be in Houston,” the Connecticut Democrat said, speaking in front of the PeoplesBank Arena in downtown Hartford, where the state would have built a $100 million-plus practice facility for the team to use.\u00a0<\/p>\n Under the deal, reported by CT Insider<\/a> and other news outlets on March 27 and announced by the\u00a0 Tribe on March 30, the Sun would play the 2026 season at\u00a0Mohegan Sun Arena, with two home games at\u00a0PeoplesBank.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n Mohegan, as the tribe’s business arm\u00a0is known,\u00a0bought the team in 2003<\/a> and moved it from Orlando, growing it into one of the more financially successful teams in the WNBA. Mohegan put the team up for sale in the spring of 2025. By August, it received a bid of $325 million, plus a practice facility \u2013 more than it ultimately accepted from Houston \u2013 from a former owner of the Boston Celtics, to move the team to that city.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make CT Insider a preferred source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Quickly, Gov. Ned Lamont and Marc Lasry, a Wall Street billionaire and former part-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks NBA franchise, matched the Boston bid to keep the team in Connecticut, playing in Hartford.\u00a0<\/p>\n The WNBA, which is in effect under the control of the NBA, rejected those and other overtures, including one that would keep the team at Mohegan Sun with an outside group, recruited by the Lamont administration, owning about 30% of the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert said at least twice last June that the league would favor a move to Houston<\/a>, which lost out to other cities including Philadelphia and Cleveland in the latest round of expansions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The WNBA also said, in response to the Boston bid, that the league alone holds the power to decide where teams locate.\u00a0<\/p>\n Can the league do that? Blumenthal said the answer is no, if the league coerced the sale to Houston. I reported sources familiar with the negotiations telling me multiple times that the league did reject any sale within Connecticut<\/a> \u2013 informally, because no formal offer ever came forward from Connecticut and Mohegan to the league, those sources told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Everybody knows the story here,” Blumenthal said. In his letter dated Monday, April 6 to the acting head of\u00a0the Department of Justice antitrust unit, he wrote, \u00a0“The WNBA\u2019s heavy hand in steering the Sun\u2019s sale appears to be market interference so brazen it may constitute interference and bid-rigging \u2013 classic signs of monopolist behavior that should alarm the DOJ.”<\/p>\n A longshot hope for Fed action<\/p>\n If you’re playing the prediction markets, don’t bet on President Donald Trump’s DOJ\u00a0to respond favorably, for several reasons.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Tilman Fertitta, the restaurant and entertainment entrepreneur whose business owns the Rockets and made the pending bid for the Sun, also happens to be the U.S. Ambassador to Italy after he happened to give $800,000<\/a> to Trump-related\u00a0PACs in the 2024 cycle. He also gave $1 million for the inauguration, where he co-hosted an event with Facebook founder Mark\u00a0Zuckerberg and others, according to multiple news stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although Blumenthal is suggesting an investigation of the league, not Fertitta, asking Trump’s lawyers to probe a deal that benefited\u00a0Fertitta might seem a stretch.\u00a0<\/p>\n “I\u2019m very clear-eyed. This antitrust department is probably the most laggard and lethargic of any in recent history. And so I\u2019m not predicting action but I am certainly hoping that the law will be enforced.”<\/p>\n The Department of Justice media office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Blumenthal’s letter. WNBA has not commented on any aspect of the pending sale, including antitrust accusations. Mohegan declined to comment Monday.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Separately, Blumenthal said Monday, he, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, are proposing a bill that would guarantee smaller markets an opportunity to make offers to keep major league sports franchises.<\/p>\n