After a tedious labor battle with the WNBPA that lasted 17 months, the WNBA’s goodwill with fans and the public was on the mend and trending upward.
The WNBA and WNBPA reached a deal on a life-altering collective bargaining agreement (CBA). It was ratified by the players’ union and the WNBA’s board of governors. It didn’t take long to find out key details. Players will receive 20 percent of gross revenue, the minimum salary for 2026 is $20,000 above last season’s supermax, and charter travel was codified. There were several other wins, but we won’t know more until the agreement is made public.
A handful of players, like veteran guards Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman, have expressed joy at securing generational wealth for their families. After recording a triple-double in a win over UC San Diego in the second round of the NCAA tournament, TCU Horned Frogs star Olivia Miles stood tall in her decision to forgo the 2025 WNBA Draft, and for good reason. Under the new CBA, the average salary for rookie players will increase by 246%, reaching $270,000. This will also apply to second and third-round picks. However, first-round picks, specifically the top four selections, will likely have much more lucrative deals. As the projected No. 1 pick, UConn Huskies star guard Azzi Fudd will earn $500,000. The second pick will receive $466,913, the third $436,016, and so on, with the last seven picks in the first round totaling $289,133.
Some of the most talented, well-stocked draft classes in recent memory will make their way to the WNBA over the next few years, and historic pay, increased roster sizes, and health and wellness guarantees await them upon arrival. For years, the generations before them went without what will soon be commonplace across the league. In recognition of the sacrifices made to reach this point, WNBA veterans and retired players will receive a one-time payment based on years of service in the league. Retired players will receive $100,000 (for 12+ years of service), $50,000 (for 8-11 years of service), or $30,000 (for 5-7 years of service). This gesture may not total near the generational wealth that will greet the current players, but it is a positive step in righting decades of missteps on and off the court.
Friday marked the first official day of the offseason with the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire in a coin toss to decide the selection order for the expansion draft. Toronto, the winner, retained the option to go second and take the No. 6 overall pick in the college draft rather than No. 7, and did so. After facing possible delays to the start of the 2026 WNBA season, the momentum was high with basketball on the horizon. That was until news broke that Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta agreed to purchase the Connecticut Sun from the Mohegan Tribe for a record $300 million, with the intention of moving the franchise to Houston, according to reports from Paper City Magazine and ESPN. The Sun will play in Uncasville as expected for the 2026 season before relocating to Houston and being renamed the Comets.
The sale is still subject to approval by the WNBA’s Board of Governors, but the writing has been on the wall for months. Last summer, the tribe secured two offers from former Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca and former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry, both of which included plans for the team to remain in New England. Keeping the Sun in the region was a key selling point for the tribe throughout the process. The team played in front of two sellout crowds at TD Garden in Boston, and the public assumption at the time was that it was only a matter of time before the Sun relocated. Eventually reaching a deal with Pagliuca for a historic $325 million that included a $100 million investment towards a new practice facility, the WNBA essentially blocked it with a single press release. In August, Front Office Sports reported that Pagliuca’s offer was never presented to the WNBA’s board of governors during the exclusivity period, allowing other interested parties to enter the fray.
“Relocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams. As part of our most recent expansion process, in which three new franchises were awarded to Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia on June 30, 2025, nine additional cities also applied for WNBA teams and remain under active consideration. 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. Celtics’ prospective owner Bill Chisholm has also reached out to the league office and asked that Boston receive strong consideration for a WNBA franchise at the appropriate time.”
In September, NBA commissioner Adam Silver defended the WNBA’s middling in the Mohegan Tribe’s sale of the Sun, and at that point, it was rather clear where this was heading.
“They have every right to sell the team in their market,” Silver said at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit. “But then we started to be contacted by people in Boston and elsewhere saying that there was a suggestion that they could buy a team in one market and take it to another. That’s sort of black-letter law in sports leagues: You can’t do that. You’re buying that market. Teams have different values in different markets, and we view those other markets as expansion markets.”
The Mohegan Tribe purchased the Orlando Miracle and relocated the team to Connecticut in 2003, becoming the first Native American tribe to own a major professional sports team. At the time, the WNBA was in constant flux as teams folded left and right due to financial instability, and prospective ownership was at an all-time low. Connecticut reached the playoffs 17 times in 23 seasons in Uncasville, reaching the WNBA Finals four times and ultimately losing each time. The struggles the tribe faced as the league advanced are well-documented. Lacking the financial means to provide a state-of-the-art practice facility and an ideal home-game location, the tribe attempted to do right by its longtime fanbase and all of New England that regularly made the trek to Mohegan Sun Arena. For the WNBA to seemingly ignore this and offer the tribe $250 million to move the Sun out of the region was an about-face on the history of this franchise, its achievements, and the players who will live forever in the foundation of this league.
After locking in a new CBA and a full season, the WNBA’s decision-makers saw a window to bypass the next round of expansion and rubber-stamp the move of a team from one of the largest, most supportive basketball regions in the country to one of the preferred markets. The Mohegan Tribe felt as much, too. According to ESPN at the time, the tribe felt that the WNBA became “antagonistic” after denying a league-imposed offer of selling to a Cleveland-based group for what was reported as “slightly lower than the subsequent expansion fee”. It would have been one thing if the tribe had issues fielding offers, but that wasn’t the case. Attempting to railroad one of the league’s longest-running ownership groups into a deal of convenience is a different ball game entirely.
Last June, the WNBA announced plans to expand to 18 teams by 2030, with franchises awarded to Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029), and Philadelphia. Each ownership group paid a historic $250 million expansion fee. The unsuccessful bids included proposals from Miami, Denver, Nashville, and Houston, which Fertitta led. After losing out on the most recent round of expansion, the Texas billionaire avoided a fee in the sale, according to ESPN. During the press conference, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert noted widespread interest in an expansion team, but acknowledged Fertitta by name.
“There are a variety of cities that obviously bid, and one of those I want to shout out because they have such a strong history in this league, and they’re a great ownership group, is Houston,” said Engelbert. “The Houston Comets were just an amazing one, the first four inaugural championships in the WNBA. I would say that’s the one, obviously, we have our eye on. Tilman [Fertitta’s] been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.”
By 2030, nine of the 18 WNBA teams could be run by NBA owners. Only the Chicago Sky, Atlanta Dream, and Seattle Storm remain without NBA ties. At one point in the league’s history, its unique ownership structure was necessary to its survival. These days, it presents more questions than answers on who is actually in charge. NBA owners represent 42% of the WNBA. If this recent bargaining period showed anything, it would be how eager they are to receive returns on their investment, which is why the league will most likely fail in buying back the 16% percent stake of the WNBA that was sold for $75 million to several WNBA owners, Nike, Pau Gasol, and Condoleezza Rice.
For the WNBA, its investors, and NBA owners, there was no financial benefit for Pagliuca or Lasry in purchasing the Sun as former minority NBA owners. Expansion fees are shared among the owners, and both New England-based groups would bypass the toll without paying. The Golden State Valkyries and Toronto Tempo each paid $50 million. At the same time, Front Office Sports reported that the Portland Fire paid $125 million for the expansion fee and the price of a new practice facility. The Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia groups each paid $250 million. The Golden State Warriors ownership group owns the Valkyries. Toronto’s owner is NBA board of governors chairman Larry Tanenbaum, whose Kilmer Sports holds a 25% stake in the Toronto Raptors. The Fire is owned by siblings Alex Bhathal and Lisa Bhathal Merage, who are part of the Sacramento Kings group. The WNBA franchise in Cleveland is owned by Dan Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers. Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores is spearheading the WNBA team in Detroit. Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment (HBSE) is at the helm in Philadelphia. By this point, you get the picture.
While WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has vehemently denied the league favors NBA owners purchasing expansion teams, not a single bid without NBA connections was taken seriously. Owners and investors want to rake in on the monstrous tide sweeping the sports world that is women’s athletics at their preferred rate. This almost delayed the start of the 2026 season, had the WNBPA not effectively used one of its powerful tools against league-imposed deadlines: the threat of a strike. From the players to the first Native American-owned franchise in professional sports and the WNBA’s longest-tenured independent ownership group, the league’s NBA owners demonstrated that their interests will take precedence over anyone else’s. For Sun fans and the New England region at large, they will pay the price now.
During the sale process last year, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to Engelbert warning the WNBA to steer clear of negotiations between the Mohegan Tribe and interested buyers for the Sun, and that “any attempts by the WNBA to block efforts to keep the Sun in Connecticut could violate federal antitrust laws.” Blumenthal also said we would “demand investigations and enforcement actions from the appropriate federal authorities if the league took any step to hinder or constrain Connecticut’s negotiations.”
U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) called the league out on Twitter/X for attempting to “force the [Tribe] to accept a low-ball offer from a Trump-backed billionaire. Connecticut Attorney General William Tong sent a letter to Engelbert demanding that the league produce documents that include the membership agreement between the WNBA and the Sun, the league’s rules and regulations, as well as copies of any appraisals, offers, and expressions of interest regarding the team. This request was made to help “better understand the position of the WNBA.” Among Tong’s concerns were reports suggesting that the WNBA attempted to purchase the Sun at a price significantly below its market value. After reports of the Sun sale, Blumenthal revisited the issue on social media, suggesting that the Department of Justice “should investigate and stop such anticompetitive interference.”
The fight for the Sun from the coalition of politicians at the state and federal levels in Connecticut is respectable. Still, there likely won’t be any true remedy to keep the team in the region. Tilman Fertitta serves in the Trump administration as the ambassador to Italy and San Martino. Fertitta has never held political office but has been a longtime donor to the GOP, including to Trump’s Save America PAC. If a sale of a WNBA team to a Trump benefactor wasn’t bad enough, the last thing the league, players, and fans need is Trump inserting himself and his war on women’s sports in the frame. Trump has even gone as far as to call Fertitta his “twin”. The two go back decades, primarily in the business sphere.
Fertitta has long spent his time currying favor amongst the top 1% and those who wield considerable power, whoever they may be. For instance, when then-Rockets general manager Daryl Morey made international headlines by tweeting an image in support of protesters in Hong Kong in 2019, the Rockets issued a statement distancing the franchise from Morey’s display. At that point, the NBA entered the PR crisis of the league’s lifetime due to its relationship with China. The NBA lost sponsorships and had games pulled from China’s state television network. At the 2020 NBA All-Star Game in Chicago, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that the tweet would likely cost the league $400 million.
“I think there’s a lot of posturing because there is definitely a Trump connection in Houston,” Wooden Award voter David Siegel told Off The Record WBB. “There would certainly be no reason for a Republican-led Senate and House to do anything about this.”
Siegel is a former Sun season-ticket holder and the former host of the first Connecticut Sun podcast called Suncast.
“It’s about the fans that have supported this team for years,” Siegel continued. “I know people who have been day-one season ticket-holders, and there are so many employees who have been there and given so much. I don’t know what kind of relocation they would even offer to these people, but to have to uproot and move everything to Houston, there’s not going to be any connection to the Connecticut Sun when you’re dealing with a location like that. That’s really unfortunate for those people in particular. There are so many people who have spent hours and hours working, and then those going to the games.”
It’s unclear at this time whether Sun employees will be offered the chance to join the Comets franchise in 2027. The trend as of late among league expansion teams with NBA connections is to siphon certain departments, like day-to-day operations and creative teams, to the WNBA side. This Monday morning, the Houston Rockets announced the revival of the Comets on Twitter/X and reposted only a single post from the new Comets account.
It’s no secret that Uncasville was a journey for fans, but what most saw as a deterrent to growth was one of the closest-knit relationships between a fanbase and its franchise.
“When I was a season-ticket holder with my family, our whole section was full of people who knew each other and were friendly,” Siegel added later. “There was a guy who sat about 15 rows behind us that we knew, and it was his birthday. We went and got cupcakes from one of the places at Mohegan Sun [Arena] for the section to celebrate his birthday. That’s what it was like for us.”
For most fans in the region, it didn’t matter where you came from. They would always be an hour and change from Mohegan Sun, but that never stopped the fanbase from showing up. From the outside looking in, Uncasville is a hard-to-find dot on the map. For the fans in the region, it was their team to root for.
“It doesn’t feel right the way this whole thing went down for all of those people who have invested that. And I don’t think a lot of people realize that this was not just Connecticut’s team. Mohegan Sun Arena, while difficult to get to for visiting teams, drew people from Rhode Island and Massachusetts to attend Sun games and season-ticket holders. I always joked that Mohegan Sun was an hour or so away, no matter where you lived.”
The Mohegan Tribe was cognizant of the times regarding player empowerment and updated facilities, so the goal was to sell the Sun to a group that prioritized keeping the team in the area. Connecticut has played in Boston twice so far, with another game scheduled at TD Garden in August. The team will also play twice in Hartford at PeoplesBank Arena.
“Fans understood players wanting more power and to have better facilities and all the things that go with that,” said Siegel. “It did become a situation where it wasn’t affordable for them to do this, and that they were going to sell the team, which brings us back to square one on why it had to go halfway across the country instead of being in New England.”
From the start, Sun fans believed this was an indication that the franchise was embracing New England ahead of a possible relocation there. Instead of moving to Hartford or Boston and rebranding as New England’s team, it’s unclear whether the Sun could be given new life in Boston with the WNBA’s preferred owner, Celtics owner Bill Chisolm, who may not get a team until 2033. That’s nearly seven years until fans reach even the possibility of the WNBA returning to the region.