Outgoing Celtics Owner and Family Looking to Potentially Move WNBA Team to Providence
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Outgoing Celtics Owner and Family Looking to Potentially Move WNBA Team to Providence
GoLocal has learned that Joe Pagliuca, son of outgoing Boston Celtics owner Steve Pagliuca, is leading the effort to try to buy the Connecticut Sun from the Mohegan Tribe and potentially move the team to Providence.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTJoe Pagliuca is the Co-Founder and President at Parquet Capital. He played basketball at Duke and received an MBA from Harvard Business School.
If the Pagliuca group is able to purchase the franchise from the tribe, Providence is a leading option for relocating the team due to its size, success with basketball, and the availability of the facility.
A group toured the facility last week, which was first reported by WPRI, but what wasn’t reported was who toured the facility and who is the potential deal maker.
Rhode Island Ties
In 2018, Steve Pagliuca purchased a waterfront estate at the end of Narrow River for then a town record $8.2 million through an LLC.
Steve Pagliuca is the chair of Bain Capital, which has $160 billion under management.
The Tribe purchased the team for $10 million 25 years ago.
Since the arrival of Caitlin Clark in the WNBA, the value of teams has exploded.
As GoLocal reported last month, each of the new expansion franchises will pay a staggering $250 million expansion fee, a figure that shatters previous records for women’s professional sports in the United States. For context, the most recent WNBA expansion teams—Golden State Valkyries, Toronto Tempo, and Portland—paid $50 million, $50 million, and $75 million, respectively, to join the league. The new $250 million fee is more than double the previous high for a women’s sports franchise, set earlier this year when the NWSL’s Denver club paid $110 million.
This leap in expansion costs underscores the WNBA’s rapidly rising profile and the heightened demand for franchise ownership. The average WNBA team is now valued at $269 million, up 180% from just a year ago, according to Sportico. The league’s newest team, the Golden State Valkyries, is already valued at $500 million in its inaugural season.
Few Events
While the facility formerly known as the Providence Civic Center is busy during the fall and winter with the Providence Bruins and the Providence College Friars, the facility is nearly vacant during the summer months.
This summer, the facility hosted a gymnastics event in June, a single event in July (WWE), and only one concert is scheduled in August, according to the building’s event schedule. The building has only eight events in 92 days this summer.
The team was established as the Orlando Miracle in 1999, during the league's expansion from ten to twelve teams, as a sister team to the NBA's Orlando Magic. In 2003, as financial strains left the team on the brink of disbanding, the Mohegan Indian tribe purchased and relocated the team to Mohegan Sun, becoming the first Native American tribe to own a professional sports franchise.
The Sun have qualified for the WNBA playoffs in 15 of their 21 seasons in Connecticut. Despite this, they are the oldest remaining franchise without a championship title.
Joe Pagliuca did not respond to questions.
This story was first published 7/15/25 10:18 AM