In July, Steve Pagliuca struck a deal with the Mohegan Tribe to buy the Connecticut Sun for $325 million. The deal has stalled as WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert never presented it to the league’s board of governors, causing the exclusivity window the tribe granted Pagliuca to expire. Now former Bucks co-owner Marc Lasry has matched Pagliuca’s $325 million offer for the team, CT Insider reported Wednesday. 

Pagliuca wants to move the team to Boston, while Lasry wants to keep the team slightly closer in Hartford, Conn.

It might cost them both more than $325 million to do so. (The WNBA also reportedly does not want the Sun playing in Hartford.)

Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the sale told Front Office Sports a possible relocation fee—paid to the league on top of the sale price paid to the tribe—could end up determining the team’s fate.

Houston is still the league’s preferred landing spot for the Sun, according to sources familiar with the sale. Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta is currently living in Italy as the Trump administration’s ambassador, with his son Patrick running the team day to day. The Houston Chronicle reported last week that Fertitta bid less than the $250 million NBA ownership groups in Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia recently paid to enter the league, although a source with knowledge of the expansion process disputed that, saying Fertitta bid the same amount and the WNBA only had three slots to offer.

Ultimately any sale and subsequent relocation of a franchise must be approved by the board of governors and are two separate transactions. However, one source familiar with the sale believes if Fertitta matches the Pagliuca and Lasry offers for the Sun, plus a relocation fee, that would be the league’s preference.  

WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has made the league’s preference known, saying that Houston is “up next” when it comes to the timeline for evaluating bids. 

The last time a WNBA team changed hands, the Atlanta Dream were sold for an undisclosed amount in 2020. The team was put up for sale in late 2020 after players and fans pushed for former co-owner Kelly Loeffler to sell following a letter that was written by the former U.S. senator and sent to Engelbert objecting to the league’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement during the bubble season. By February 2021, the sale was unanimously approved by the WNBA’s and NBA’s board of governors. 

Swift approvals have been the historical pattern with WNBA sales and relocations. In 2008, when a Tulsa group bought the Detroit Shock, the sale and relocation were announced just a week after Bill Cameron had declared he was applying to buy a team.

But the business of the WNBA has exploded since then. The league brought in a total of $750 million in expansion fees from Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. When the Sun are sold, the league won’t receive money from the sale price, emphasizing the need for a relocation fee to get the deal over the hump. 

It was reported in May that the Sun had hired investment bank Allen & Company to pursue a sale. However, multiple sources have told FOS that the franchise was in discussions regarding a sale since at least January. 

The months-long delay can be attributed to the newly lucrative business of WNBA expansion, which has led the league to take a more hands-on approach to approving team relocations.

In the league’s initial statement following reports of Pagliuca’s record-breaking offer to buy the Sun, the league referenced incoming Celtics owner Bill Chisholm directly. The statement said in part he had reached out to the league office “and asked that Boston receive strong consideration for a WNBA franchise at the appropriate time,” indicating the league’s preference for awarding an expansion franchise to another NBA ownership group. 

Four of the league’s six expansion franchises since 2023 when the Golden State Warriors were awarded a team have gone to NBA ownership groups. The other two—Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire—were awarded to owners with stakes in NBA teams. Engelbert has not shied away from the league’s preference for awarding franchises to NBA owners, citing the established infrastructure with arenas and practice facilities.  

Because there was no expansion bid from Pagliuca or any other Boston-based group in the most recent expansion process, the league has said it will prioritize the nine cities that lost out on expansion teams to Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia. One of those is Houston.

This story has been updated.

The Pohlad family said Wednesday that it has decided to take the Twins off the market and instead sell significant minority stakes to two groups, following a roughly 10-month sale exploration process. The stakes are “substantial” and the deal is intended to help the Twins pay down debt, Front Office Sports has learned.

The news was shared by the team itself, via a statement from the Pohlad family outlining that a “wide range of potential investment and ownership opportunities” were considered in the time since the team hired Allen & Company to explore a sale. 

“After a detailed and robust process, our family will remain the principal owner of the Minnesota Twins,” the statement says. 

Financial details of the stake sales were not disclosed, nor were the size of the stakes or the buyers’ identities. A source familiar with the matter tells FOS the stakes will be “substantial” and that the valuation of the Twins in the stake sales is in line with what the Pohlads had been seeking (the reported asking price was $1.7 billion). Additionally, the source says one of the buying groups is based in Minnesota, the other is based out of New York, and their identities will likely become known in a matter of weeks.

Each group will get a seat on the team’s board of directors, giving them input into all business and operational matters, the source says, although under the deal the new minority owners will not have a path to becoming controlling owners. “They are strictly partners,” the source says. 

The news came as a shock, although it’s actually in line with a recent FOS report that there could be news on the sale process “within a matter of weeks,” as well as comments made by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred during the All-Star break in Atlanta—“I know some things that you don’t know,” Manfred said. “I can tell you with a lot of confidence that there will be a transaction there, and it will be consistent with the kind of pricing that has taken place.”

According to the source, there were proposals “throughout the process,” but in the end the Pohlads determined the sale of two minority stakes was in the best interests of both the family and the team. Among the benefits is that the new partners will provide capital the Twins can use to pay down substantial debt; the team reportedly has more than $425 million in debt, which has led to speculation about money troubles. MLB has debt service rules on its books meant to ensure teams maintain fiscal stability, but the league has not stepped in to offer emergency financial assistance to the Twins.

The Twins, who at 56–63 sit in second-to-last place in the American League Central, are coming off a fire sale that saw the team trade eight players on the day of the trade deadline, including star closer Jhoan Duran and shortstop Carlos Correa.

The Pohlads bought the Twins for $44 million in 1984. The patriarch, Carl Pohlad, died in 2009, at which point his son Jim took over the team. In 2022, Jim’s nephew Joe Pohlad assumed primary administrative duties, while Jim remained the controlling owner. 

As the Dodgers, Mets, and Yankees stumble through the summer, a powerhouse has emerged whose payroll is a fraction of the league’s highest spenders.

On Tuesday night, the Brewers dominated against Pirates star pitcher Paul Skenes, winning 14–0 to improve to an MLB-best 75–44 record. Milwaukee has won 11 consecutive games for the second time in the last two months, and it has won 26 of its last 30 games.

It has five more wins than any other team in MLB and holds a six-game lead for the top spot in the National League.

That’s despite a payroll of $141.9 million, good for 20th (out of 30) in the league, and just ahead of the Rockies, who are in jeopardy of finishing with the worst record in MLB history. Milwaukee’s payroll is about a third of what the Dodgers pay ($406.2 million).

Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is notorious for keeping the team’s payroll down. This past offseason, the most they spent on a free agent was $1 million for Tyler Alexander while trading two-time Reliever of the Year Devin Williams to the Yankees ahead of his free agency this winter.

The Athletic reported in February that Attanasio even asked the team’s front office to explore cost-cutting trades for Aaron Civale ($8 million)—who it eventually traded to the White Sox in June—and Joel Payamps ($3 million).

But with just over a month left in the season, there’s little for Brewers fans to complain about as the organization has continued to be the standard-bearer for performance on a budget. It is on pace to qualify for the playoffs for the seventh time in eight years, including four 90-win seasons—though it has not made the World Series in that span.

Opportune Time

The Brewers’ success is still more of an outlier than the norm. While the teams with the top three highest payrolls have struggled as of late, they are all still above .500. The Phillies and Blue Jays—the fourth- and fifth-highest payrolls—have the next best records in MLB to the Brewers.

High spenders also tend to walk away with the Commissioner’s Trophy. The controversial 2017 Astros team was the last to win the World Series without a payroll in the top half of MLB.

Milwaukee’s success does come as MLB’s labor tensions continue to boil. There’s a belief that the league is looking to add a salary cap—which the MLB Players Association has resisted for decades—and a work stoppage in 2027 is not out of the question.

“My contingency plan is to make an agreement with the players and play the ’27 season,” commissioner Rob Manfred told reporters, including Front Office Sports, in Chicago earlier this month. “I’m optimistic that we’ll find a way to make a deal.”