The Connecticut Sun are heading to Houston. The WNBA and NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved the sale and relocation of the franchise on Wednesday, transferring ownership from the Mohegan Tribe to Houston Rockets owner Tilman J. Fertitta and setting the stage for the franchise to begin play as the Houston Comets in 2027.
The sale closes at $300 million, a record price for a WNBA franchise, and the deal did not include a relocation fee. Fertitta, who has owned the Rockets since 2017, will add a WNBA counterpart to his NBA operation at Toyota Center — the same arena where the Comets are expected to play their home games beginning next season.
The Sun will finish out the 2026 campaign in Connecticut. Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville remains the team’s home through the end of this season, though the club will also play two regular-season games at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford and another contest at TD Garden in Boston before the franchise officially crosses state lines for good.
The Comets name carries real weight in women’s basketball history. Houston was one of the WNBA’s original eight franchises when the league launched in 1997, and the team won the first four WNBA championships in consecutive seasons before folding after the 2008 season. Banners from those title runs still hang in the rafters of Toyota Center. Reviving the Comets branding was a stated priority of the Fertitta group from early in the process.
For South Carolina fans who follow the WNBA, the move carries a geographic footnote. The Connecticut Sun had long been the closest franchise on the eastern seaboard to the Palmetto State, and it was visible in the league’s TV windows as a natural rival-market team. That proximity shifts west with the relocation to Houston.
South Carolina’s footprint in the WNBA has never been deeper. Dawn Staley’s program sent a record 12 Gamecocks onto opening-day rosters for the 2026 season — the most active players the program has ever had in the league at once. A’ja Wilson, who left Columbia as the program’s defining star and has since become arguably the best player in the WNBA’s history, plays for the Las Vegas Aces. Aliyah Boston, another South Carolina product, is in Indianapolis with the Fever on a new long-term extension. Both came out of a pipeline that has made USC women’s basketball the most prolific WNBA feeder program in the country.
The Sun’s departure from New England ends a 23-year run in Connecticut. The franchise moved from Orlando to Uncasville in 2003 under Mohegan Tribe ownership — the first WNBA team owned outside of an NBA franchise. The Fertitta deal closes a competitive bidding process; an earlier agreement with a Boston-based investor group to keep the team in New England collapsed after the WNBA asserted that relocation decisions rest with the Board of Governors rather than individual teams, and that cities that had already completed the expansion vetting process — including Houston — held priority.
The sale is expected to close shortly now that league approval has been secured, with the formal transition to Houston Comets branding anticipated ahead of the 2027 season.
