Steve Pagliuca, minority owner of the Boston Celtics, and a group of investors have reportedly purchased the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun it was announced Saturday.
The deal is for $325M which would be a new record for a WNBA team, though the sale is still pending approval from the league’s board of governors. News of the deal comes on the heels of the Sun ownership group announcing that they were exploring the possibility of a sale back in May.
The record setting price tag is even more jarring when one remembers that the last team to be sold in the WNBA was in 2021 when Larry Gottesdiener purchased the Atlanta Dream for just under $10M. One year prior, Mark Davis paid roughly $2M for the Las Vegas Aces, meaning that in 4 years, franchise valuations have seen a 32.5x return on investment.
According to initial reports, Pagliuca’s group wants to move the team to Boston to begin play for the 2027 WNBA season. If approved, the new ownership group would also commit $100M to a new dedicated practice facility in downtown Boston.
The Sun currently play out of the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, and have regularly needed to use the local community centre to practice out of in the past. WNBA player polls regularly rank their facilities amongst the worst in the league, making a move to a larger media market with world class amenities an attractive proposition for the WNBA.
Still, any potential move would require league approval, though it isn’t expected to receive much resistance at the board of governors level.
“Any sales agreement with relocation of the team to a different market would need to be approved by the WNBA and would also be subject to non-disclosure terms,” said the Mohegan leadership group in a statement. “Therefore, we cannot comment on any specifics of who, if anyone, has submitted offers or seeks investment in the Connecticut Sun at this time.”
The Sun have been amongst the most successful franchises in the league in terms of wins and losses over the last 20 years. However, they’ve never fully made it over the hump, losing in the WNBA Finals 4 times as they continue to search for an elusive first championship.
Photo: Lorie Shaull. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.