Sunrise, or Sunset? The Sun's Shaky Future in Connecticut

Mathew Biadun | News-Editor

Will Connecticut lose its only major league sports team? That's the question facing many as the future of the Connecticut Sun, the WNBA team owned by Mohegan Sun, is rumored to be on the market and possibly bought out by out-of-state owners. Governor Lamont has been anxious to keep the team in-state, proposing a plan to use state-pensions funds to buy out the team. But in a rare alliance, both his union allies and Republican enemies have come out against the plan.

The Sun was owned by the Mohegan Tribal Nation in 2003, when it was bought and relocated to their casino-based sports arena in Uncasville. At the time, the deal came at a price of ten-million dollars. The deal appears to have paid off; an estimate by Forbes in June pegged the team at being worth about two-hundred million, although rumors of potential current buyers have the proposed price at above three-hundred.

The tribe has seemed reluctant to invest much in the team. The owners received bad press in 2024, when it was revealed that the Sun had to share practice space at a local community center, instead of the modern training-center most major league teams are accustomed to. Much attention has also come to the fact that the team is based in the Mohegan Sun Arena, which only fits 10,000 guests. In comparison, Hartford’s PeoplesBank Arena (formerly known as the XL Center) fits 16000.

Due to a combination of these factors, the tribe appears to no longer want the team. Rumors of a potential buyout came out late in the summer. A group supposedly led by Steve Pagluici, a minority owner of the Boston Celtics, has reportedly offered $325 million to buy the team and move it to Boston. Marc Lasry, formerly a minority owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, has also offered to buy the team. His bid would keep the team instate, albeit moved to Hartford. But faced against bigger media markets and large investors in other states, the team’s future may lie outside of the Nutmeg State.

That is, unless Governor Ned Lamont has something to say about it.

The Governor came out earlier this month in favor of a plan to have the state itself buy a share of the Sun, and keep it in state. This plan would see the state government use state-pension funds, which have been seeing higher-than-expected returns in recent years, to buy a stake in the Sun. He calls it a good investment based on the success of women’s sports in recent years, which have been seeing a boom in popularity.

Unwilling to play ball, however, are the state’s Republican leaders. The CT-GOP has been broadly opposed to efforts to spend pension funds on non-pension matters. Rep. Tammy Nuccio, for instance, mentioned that “We still have a large amount of pension debt”. The Minority House Leader Vincent Candelora called it a ‘high-risk investment’, and was also opposed.

Resistance from the other aisle may have been expected. But somewhat more of a surprise came from Lamont’s usual teammates; public-sector unions. Council 4 of the AFSCME, Connecticut’s largest public sector union, came out against the deal with a Facebook post reading, “These members have put their hard-earned money into the pension fund, expecting a secure retirement, not for it to be used on a sports franchise that plays 18 games a year in Connecticut.” 

With a gubernatorial election only one year away, angering key union allies may be dangerous to Lamont’s political future, were he to seek a third-term.

Both the state’s pension funds and the WNBA have been riding high in recent years, seeing all-time highs in terms of stability and performance. But both are plagued by the same questions. Will the good times continue? Or is it just a temporary trend?