The Connecticut Sun Are Moving. Tilman Fertitta Buys WNBA Franchise From Mohegan Tribe
The Connecticut Sun are about to be the Houston Sun, or some version of it. The WNBA and NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved the sale of the franchise from the Mohegan Tribe to Tilman Fertitta. The relocation is coming. The branding will follow.
Fertitta paid a reported $325 million for the team, the highest price ever for a WNBA franchise by a significant margin. He already owns the Houston Rockets. The pieces are obvious. The Sun become Houston’s WNBA team, share a market with the Rockets, and get the same operational infrastructure that Fertitta runs across his other properties.
This is the end of the Connecticut Sun as a franchise built around Mohegan Sun Arena. The team has played there since 2003. The Mohegan Tribe ran a model that worked on its own terms but never scaled the way the modern WNBA needed it to. Attendance was solid. Local revenue was modest. The league had been pushing for a sale for years.
The buyers’ line was always going to be a major-market owner with deep pockets. Fertitta fits the description. He has the personal wealth, he has the existing NBA infrastructure, and he has been openly aggressive about adding sports properties.
For the WNBA, this is the kind of franchise sale the league has been waiting on. The valuation is a real number that other owners can point to when they negotiate new media rights, expansion fees, and collective bargaining. The next CBA conversations just got more leverage on the owner side because the franchise values have moved.
Houston gets a team. The market has been wanting one for years. The Rockets infrastructure is in place. Toyota Center can host games. The Houston Comets legacy is still alive in the city’s basketball culture. Fertitta and Cathy Engelbert are going to make a real run at honoring that legacy in some form.
The players will move with the franchise. DeWanna Bonner. Alyssa Thomas if she re-signs. The Sun roster has been one of the more competitive groups in the league for the last decade. Now they get an upgraded practice facility, an upgraded medical setup, and the kind of resources Fertitta is known for putting into his teams.
The losers are the New England fans who built the original Sun identity. The team won three Eastern Conference titles. They produced All-Stars. They lost the WNBA Finals in 2019 and 2022. That history does not move with the franchise. The Connecticut version of the Sun ends here.
The bigger story is the WNBA’s trajectory. The league is in the middle of an unprecedented growth window. The Caitlin Clark effect drove ratings. The new media deal kicks in next year. Expansion is on the table for multiple cities. Franchise values are going up faster than anyone forecasted.
The Sun being sold for $325 million is the headline number. The actual story is that the WNBA has graduated to the point where ownership of a team is a real business with real upside, and Tilman Fertitta is not the last billionaire who is going to write a check this size.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
