Key Points
- The WNBA approved the $300 million sale of the Connecticut Sun on May 14, 2026.
- Buyer Tilman Fertitta will move the team to Houston and revive the Comets name.
- It is the largest sale of a professional women's sports team on record.
- The Sun play a final 2026 season in Connecticut before relocating in 2027.
The most valuable women's basketball franchise in history is going back to where the league's dynasty started. On May 14, the WNBA Board of Governors unanimously approved the $300 million sale of the Connecticut Sun to Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, who will move the team to Houston in 2027 and bring back a name the sport retired too early: the Comets.
The price is the headline. At $300 million, it is the largest sum ever paid for a professional women's sports team, a number that would have been unthinkable for a WNBA franchise even three years ago and a marker of how fast the league's economics have re-rated. The Mohegan Tribe, which bought the Sun in 2003 and became the first non-NBA ownership group in the WNBA, sold the franchise it backed for two decades before women's basketball became a growth asset.
Getting here was a brawl. As Uristocrat reported when the deal first stalled, the league blocked an earlier $325 million bid from Boston Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca, who wanted to relocate the team to Boston, while Marc Lasry pushed a competing offer to keep it in Hartford. The WNBA preferred a buyer it could steer, and Fertitta — an existing NBA owner moving the team to a major media market with a relocation fee attached — was the destination the league wanted. The Mohegan Tribe wanted maximum value; the league wanted control over where the franchise landed. Fertitta's bid resolved both.
The Comets revival is the part that carries weight beyond the balance sheet. Houston's original Comets won the first four WNBA championships from 1997 to 2000 behind Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes, and Tina Thompson — the league's founding dynasty — before the franchise folded in 2008. Reviving the name in a market that already proved it would turn out for women's basketball is a bet that the WNBA's history is now an asset worth marketing, not a chapter to move past.
For now, the Sun finish out a final season in Connecticut. "I want our staff and players to just be able to focus on this season and being present for the 2026 last season in Connecticut," team president Jen Rizzotti said. "I think our fans deserve that."
Source: CT Mirror, CBS Sports.
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