The WNBA has turned down Steve Pagliuca’s $325 million bid for the Sun and rerouted the franchise to Tilman Fertitta for a reported $300 million, setting up a move to Houston next season. On Tuesday night, the team’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks in Boston felt less like a stop on the schedule than a last look.
That is why the search around Sun vs sparks landed in Boston again on Tuesday. The Sun were playing next to TD Garden while the league’s ownership decision was already changing where the franchise will live, and the timing made the game read like a farewell before the move takes hold.
A block party took over Canal Street on Tuesday afternoon, billed as a celebration for fans heading next door to the WNBA game, but the scene inside TD Garden told a different story. Large sections of the mezzanine were empty, and second-hand ticket brokers were asking less than $50 before tipoff, a softer market than the one Boston gave the Sun in 2024, when a game in the city set attendance and ratings records, and again in 2025, when Caitlin Clark made a rare Hub appearance.
Jen Rizzotti stood on Canal Street before the game beside a table filled with blank cards, pens and a mailbox for fans writing love letters to the Sun, and she did not hide how jarring the decision felt. She said the first reaction was disappointment because the team’s future had seemed pointed toward Boston before it was pulled away, and she said the crowd in the city still showed why the league cannot ignore this market. “The fact that we’re coming up here and we’re going to have another full arena shows that the fans are going to show up and care about the WNBA regardless,” she said.
The contradiction is what hangs over the move. Boston has shown it would support the Sun, and Olivia Nelson-Ododa said the support is there for women’s sports in general, adding that Boston could be a potential expansion team or expansion opportunity because of the turnout. But the WNBA chose the lower reported offer and the Houston path anyway, which means the franchise is not just changing hands; it is leaving a market that has already shown it can fill the building and turning those Boston games into memory.
Rizzotti said she hopes the league returns one day to celebrate the WNBA in New England, but for now the next chapter is fixed. The Sun are scheduled to relocate to Houston next season, and the unanswered question is not whether Boston wanted them. It is why the league valued the different deal more than the higher bid.
