Houston, Boston, Hartford Tipped as Likely Landing Spots for WNBA’s Connecticut Sun

The Connecticut Sun of the Women’s National Basketball Association appear to be on the move soon, with three cities emerging as likely landing spots.

According to Front Office Sports, the Mohegan Tribe has been trying to sell the Sun for several months. And depending on who the team is sold to — and which of those potential owners is willing to pay the league a relocation fee — it could land in Boston, Houston or Hartford.

Houston appears to be the favourite option of the league and commissioner Cathy Engelbert. An expansion bid led by Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta reportedly fell short of the $250 million expansion fee that groups from Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia paid earlier this year. But FOS reports that, if Fertitta is willing to buy the Sun and pay the relocation fee, the resurrection of a Houston franchise could be expedited.

Houston was home to a WNBA franchise, the Houston Comets, from 1997 to 2008. The team won four straight WNBA championships from 1997 to 2000, but were disbanded in 2008 when owner Hilton Koch put the team up for sale and no investors stepped up to take over.

SportsLogos.net files

As noted earlier this year with the resurrection of the Portland Fire identity and speculation about the Cleveland and Detroit expansion teams bringing back the Rockers and Shock identities respectively, the WNBA has filed for trademarks with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for several defunct team nicknames, including the Houston Comets.

Boston — which has never been home to a WNBA team before — is in play thanks to the interest of private equity owner Steve Pagliuca, a former co-owner of the Boston Celtics and current owner of Atalanta BC in Italy’s Serie A. Pagliuca reportedly had a deal in place to buy the Sun earlier this summer for $325 million, but Engelbert didn’t present the bid to the WNBA board of governors in July and thus his exclusive window to negotiate with the Mohegan Tribe expired.

The other city in the running — and possibly the least appealing to the league, according to FOS — is Hartford. The former home city of the NHL’s Whalers is the preferred location of a group of Connecticut investors led by former Milwaukee Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry who want to keep the team in the state and have matched Pagliuca’s $325 million offer.

Like Boston, Hartford has never hosted a WNBA franchise before. If successful, it’s conceivable the Connecticut group could keep the Sun nickname for the brand equity already built up, but might have to strip away the Indigenous imagery that’s part of the team’s current identity.