NBA Commissioner Adam Silver recently defended the WNBA’s involvement in negotiations to sell the Connecticut Sun amid claims that the league may be doing so illegally. Silver’s comments, however, may cause more confusion than clarity in light of an unprecedented sports saga.
“The [Mohegan Tribe] have every right to sell the team in their market,” Silver said on Sept. 16 at Front Office Sports’ Tuned In conference.
The hoopla comes after the Sun garnered record-breaking offers to the tune of $325+ million, but the league apparently refused to allow a sale — either to former Boston Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca or Connecticut-based billionaire Marc Lasry.
“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,” Silver said.
An NBA spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Campus that Silver’s usage of the term “market” actually refers solely to the home venue in which the teams play, not the word’s traditional meanings.
Usually, a sports “market” refers generally to the geography of its fan base, influence and business, aligning in many cases with market boundaries used for broadcast media, or benchmarked vaguely on population size or franchise values. Principally, smaller media markets are home to smaller populations, so they bring in less viewership and revenue.
Silver reiterated the WNBA’s stance on the Sun’s potential move to Boston under Pagliuca: cities which applied for a team in the league’s previous expansion process “have priority” even as part of a private team sale.
“We ran a process that went for almost a year and [nine] cities came to us and said ‘here’s our operational plan for how we’ll operate,'” Silver said. “Boston did not apply at that time for an expansion team, and frankly, neither did Hartford.”
Serious questions have been raised about how the league internally considers a club’s relocation versus a new, purebred expansion team. While most states are large enough to support multiple metropolitan areas and diverse sports landscapes, Connecticut is geographically small and encompasses mostly the one Hartford-New Haven media market.
“This is nuts…Hartford and Boston didn’t bid for an expansion franchise for obvious reasons: New England already has a WNBA team, which is the Sun,” said Brooklyn-based Journalist Neil deMause in August. His book, Field of Schemes, discusses the history and politics of publicly-funded stadiums and their effects on taxpayers.
“Even calling a move from Mohegan Sun to Hartford a ‘relocation’ feels like a stretch: When the New York Liberty moved from Madison Square Garden to White Plains and then to Brooklyn, those were arguably more significant moves, but nobody at the league suggested that the team be put up for bid to move to Austin or Nashville,” he said.
Even if we take the NBA’s assertion at face value, the Sun’s current home at Mohegan Sun Arena isn’t the smallest “market” in the WNBA at around 10,000 seats. Three arenas have less capacity, the smallest being the Atlanta Dream’s Gateway Center Arena in College Park, GA at 3,500 seats. They’re seeking a larger home, too.
A potential Sun move to Hartford would have them play in Peoples Bank Arena, which just completed a multimillion dollar renovation after an era of being the XL Center. The University of Connecticut’s highly acclaimed basketball programs play there to over 16,250 seats. Even if the Boston bid was feasible, they’d play at TD Garden to over 19,500, a crowd the Sun has already sold out twice.
Another element of confusion is the term “territory,” which the NBA spokesperson confirms is a 75-mile radius from — in the Sun’s case — the Mohegan Sun Casino and Resort. In cases where territories would overlap with another team’s, such as with the New York Liberty, then the areas would be forked in two unless the league approves some other arrangement.
Both Hartford and Uncasville, not to mention the entirety of Rhode Island and a large chunk of Massachusetts, already exist in the Sun’s “territory.”
“The tribe is frustrated and feels the league is presenting a one-path option: relocation of the team to a market of its choosing at a value of its choosing,” an ESPN report said.
It is understandable that the current 13-member WNBA is interested in expansion, especially since some of their charter teams no longer exist. The NBA, with 30 teams, already covers more area, but is exploring expansion too, with Silver having said that “there’s so many great markets out there that love the NBA.”
“We recognize there are underserved markets in the United States and elsewhere — I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams,” Silver also said in June.
One of the highest-ranked DMAs without an NBA team is Seattle, which formerly hosted the Seattle Supersonics from the team’s founding in 1967 to 2008, when they were sold and moved to become the Oklahoma City Thunder. Amid questions about a new team based there, Silver went on record earlier this year calling Seattle a “fantastic basketball market.”
He said the same of the San Francisco Bay area in 2022, adding that the region “historically has been a great woman’s basketball market.” They gained a WNBA team with the Golden State Valkyries in 2023.
When the Thunder and Indiana Pacers made it to the NBA Finals earlier this year, a myriad of discussions started about both teams’ “small market” status, as Indianapolis is ranked 25 and Oklahoma City at 47. Silver, on a media tour ahead of the championship, said it’s a factor that should be celebrated, with a bold comparison to the NFL.
“If we were going into a Super Bowl and it was the [Green Bay] Packers vs. the [Pittsburgh] Steelers you guys would celebrate that,” Silver said on a talk show. “People wouldn’t talk about Pittsburgh being a small market.”
“Whatever market it is, [those teams] have passionate fans,” Silver said on another show. “They’re competing for the championship…It’s the story, it isn’t that it’s a small market.”
“Maybe I’m jealous, in a way, of the NFL,” Silver said on the radio. “It’s unimaginable that it would be, ‘Can you believe two small markets are meeting in the Super Bowl this year?’ No, it’s two ‘storied franchises.'”
Connecticut may be considered a “small market,” ranked 32nd in the country — larger than a few of the NBA’s own DMAs — but the legacy surrounding women’s basketball in the state due in large part to the UConn Huskies which has helped propel the Sun to becoming the first profitable WNBA team, amongst other accolades.
“Back in the day when the league was more struggling, we did a lot of stuff to keep it in the game,” said Mitchell Etess, the then-CEO of Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment when they bought the Orlando Miracle to re-christen them as the Sun in 2002.
The WNBA even originally wanted the team to play at the then Hartford Civic Center, according to the Hartford Courant, but a short turnaround necessitated playing in the smaller Mohegan Sun Arena in time for the 2003 season.
I think when you have the most successful women’s basketball college team of all time here, it makes sense to have a professional team here…I think the [Sun] can continue to be successful here
Mitchell Etess, Former CEO of Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment
“I think when you have the most successful women’s basketball college team of all time here, it makes sense to have a professional team here…I think the [Sun] can continue to be successful here,” Etess said.
Although the NBA is technically separate from the WNBA, they own 42% plus equity from team owners that also own NBA teams — giving them de facto control of the women’s league.
Reports suggest that the league would prefer to cherry-pick an NBA owner to purchase the Sun for a cheaper price and that WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert intentionally kept the Sun deals hidden from the league’s board of governors to coerce the tribe to sell to Houston.
The league’s actions have been perceived by state leaders and many fans as interference to the tribe’s right to a fair business transaction, prompting inquiries from Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong. They’re telling the league, “hands off our team.”
The Connecticut Sun sale saga may still be simmering, but the current owners have committed to playing at Mohegan Sun through the 2026 season.
The Daily Campus will continue to report on this developing story.
This has gone on too long.. just let the Sun stay in Connecticut! I wouldn’t be surprised if Cathy Engelbert resigned or was fired due to literally keeping the deal secret.. amongst other things:
“We have the best players in the world. We have the best fans in the world. But right now we have the worst leadership in the world,” Napheesa Collier recently said.. she’d know, too, being a powerhouse UConn and W player.
Cathy’s attitude? “Players should be on their knees thanking their lucky stars for the media-rights deal that I got them.”
Adam Silver? Also not facing high approval in the middle of this Clippers scandal..