February 19, 2022; Cleveland, OH, USA; Boston Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca during the Skills Challenge during the 2022 NBA All-Star Saturday Night at Rocket Mortgage Field House. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images A $325 million offer to purchase the WNBA’s Connecticut Sun was agreed to by both buyer and seller in July but the league never presented the details to the WNBA board of governors for approval, Front Office Sports reported Tuesday.
The prospective purchase of the Sun by Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, from Connecticut’s Mohegan Tribe, remains in limbo.
Pagliuca has expressed the desire to move the team to larger arenas in New England and vowed to invest in a $110 million practice facility. The desired relocation site is believed to be Boston.
Details of the agreed-to sale reportedly made their way to WNBA commissioner Kathy Engelbert but never to the board, which signs off on all ownership changes.
With the deal not approved during an “exclusivity” time period of less than a month, at least one other party has emerged as a potential buyer of the franchise, which the Mohegan Tribe purchased for $10 million in 2023 and relocated from Orlando to Uncasville, Conn.
After Pagliuca made his interest in purchasing the Sun known, Front Office Sports reported this week, through a statement from the WNBA, that nothing has been approved and that relocation is decided by the board “and not by individual teams.”
The WNBA also noted that in the recent process to select Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia as future cities for expansion, there was no interest from a potential ownership group in Boston.
Based on that lack of interest, the league seemed to suggest that Boston is not a target market at the current time.
“No groups from Boston applied for a team at that time and those other cities remain under consideration based on the extensive work they did as part of the expansion process and currently have priority over Boston,” the league’s statement said.
In June, Engelbert expressed a hope for the league to move back into the Houston market saying, “Houston would be up next for sure.”
Sun president Jen Rizzotti spoke about the team’s potential sale on Sunday.
“I can’t speak to where the team is going to go,” Rizzotti told reporters. “But if Boston was an option, it’s hard to argue that they’re not a city that’s viable for a WNBA franchise.”
–Field Level Media
