The WNBA鈥橲 open their 2025 season on Sunday as they host the Washington Mystics. is reporting that owners are exploring putting the Sun up for sale, and there's a chance the team could leave 黑料新闻.
Caroline O鈥橩eefe, the team's communications manager, tells 黑料新闻 the ownership is looking for possible investment opportunities in the team.
"At this time, there has been no official change in ownership, and no decisions have been made regarding the future of the team," O'Keefe wrote in a statement. "The ownership group is committed to the team鈥檚 continued success, which includes looking at all strategic options that are in the best interest of the 黑料新闻 Sun and the WNBA. Should there be any official updates, they will come directly from the organization."
Gov. Ned Lamont says he will talk to ownership about keeping the team in the state.
"I'll be blunt, I'm not really big on the taxpayers putting a lot of money at risk 鈥� but I also know how important the 黑料新闻 Sun is, so I'll just hear what they have to say," he said.
The news comes after reports surfaced in January that Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment said in its annual report that represented a major threat to its viability as a business.
O'Keefe confirmed the firm Allen and Co. has been hired "to assist with the process of exploring all investment opportunities.鈥�
As of last year, Sportico valued the 黑料新闻 Sun at about $80 million. The publication reports that the value of WNBA teams has risen since then and the teams have also become more expensive to operate.
Sportico鈥檚 Eben Novy-Williams, who co-wrote the article that broke the story of a possible sale, joined host John Henry Smith on "All Things Considered."
What would you say the odds are of the Sun getting sold and leaving?
I think it's pretty likely. The . I think most fans are familiar with the boost in attention that has come along in the last few years - being a big part of that. As teams make more money, as there's more eyeballs and more fans want to go, the cost of owning these teams also goes up.
The league, they want teams playing in bigger venues and, in particular, having fancy, $10 million-plus training facilities and all these things that some owners are eager to do because they see the potential, and other owners are maybe a bit more reticent to do because the team they bought into and the league they bought into is different than the WNBA is right now.
I think the cost of operating the Sun right now is certainly more than it was when the [Mohegan] tribal gaming authority bought the team in 2003. And, as a result, we've seen this in other sports, but as the cost of ownership goes up, you see prior owners getting out. And, that's my sense of what's happening here with the Sun.
In my career, I've seen underfunded owners like of the New Orleans Hornets back in the day. But, he didn't have a casino where, in some circles, is synonymous with a license to print money. So, do you think that really the Mohegan tribe is looking at this saying 鈥榳e don't have the pockets for this?鈥�
I think it may be less 鈥榳e don't have the money,鈥� and maybe more 鈥榳e don't want to spend the money on this,鈥� right? These teams are not yet profitable, right? So, it's not like building a $40 million training facility also means that you get return on that investment immediately for the casino.
Owning this team was kind of a loss leader and also a traffic driver for the property in 黑料新闻, and who knows if they feel like that's run its course or not. There's also a chance that they're looking at this and saying, yeah, for a long time, this team was probably worth single-digit million dollars. And now, poof, it's worth $100-plus million dollars, and maybe now is the right time financially for us to exit.
To answer your second question about relocating, it's hard to imagine somebody paying $100-plus million dollars to buy this team and, oh, it's gonna play in a casino that's owned by the former owners who also named the team after them, right?
There's a whole lot of reasons why you can imagine somebody paying a lot of money for this asset and thinking, 鈥�"You know what? I think I can commercialize this in my own way and in a bigger way if it's located in a bigger city in a place with a bigger footprint of fans locally right around it."
So, handicap the players in this game who might pony up for the 黑料新闻 Sun.
So, there were more than a dozen groups from a dozen different cities in the past year that have put together the finances and the plan to have a WNBA team. And for most of those, they were dealing with the WNBA to say, look, let's bring an expansion team to Detroit or Philadelphia or Cleveland or Austin or Portland, right? So there's a whole bunch of groups who are now looking at this as maybe another potential avenue for getting a team, right? It's not just expansion now. it's also, "I could buy that team and I could move it."
So once again, the state of 黑料新闻 is faced with the prospect of losing a professional team. Could this be a death knell for major professional sports in 黑料新闻?
Yeah, it's certainly not the answer that I think a lot of local [黑料新闻-based] fans want to hear. But yeah, as these teams become more valuable, sometimes they do outgrow not just their owners, but outgrow the physical location in which they're located. There's no massive market big enough, and depending on where you are in 黑料新闻, you're not that far away from Long Island or from New York City, right, which is the most valuable sports market in the country. Yeah, I wouldn't 鈥� I would definitely never, say never, obviously. But it's hard to imagine an owner who's willing to have it [a major professional team] in a market like that when there are big places that don't have teams of their own.
When does this happen?
The team's not going to move mid-year. But again, I wouldn't be shocked if there is a new owner in place well before the end of this season.
黑料新闻's Abigail Brone and Matt Dwyer contributed to this story.
