Here come the Comets, with a tiny asterisk attached to that for now.
The WNBA and NBA Board of Governors unanimously approved the sale and relocation of the Connecticut Sun on Wednesday, making what already has been known, official: The Houston Comets are returning.
Fertitta Entertainment, Tilman Fertitta’s company that also owns the Houston Rockets, announced in March that it had agreed to buy the Connecticut franchise from the Mohegan Tribe and would relocate the team to the Toyota Center. The team also already had started accepting deposits for 2027 season tickets in Houston. All that was missing was sign-off from the league, and now that final hurdle has been cleared.
The Comets will have a press conference Thursday to celebrate the announcement.
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The Sun, who are off to an 0-2 start, will finish this season at the Mohegan Sun Arena and move to Houston in time for the beginning of the 2027 season.
See here and here for the background. Here’s the coverage from that press conference.
When Patrick Fertitta heralded the return of the Houston Comets on Thursday with the sale of the Connecticut Sun to the Fertitta family being unanimously approved by the other WNBA owners, the alternate governor to the Houston Rockets made sure to give Connecticut its plaudits.
“They’ve been wonderful partners throughout this process,” Fertitta said while sitting inside the Toyota Center practice court that will be home to the Houston Comets in about 11 months. “The Sun are a first-class organization. That has been and will continue to be a great transition.”
Whenever there’s an ownership switch of any franchise, change is a given. However, Fertitta praised the Sun front office and gave his stamp of approval for keeping the key executive pieces there intact. Jennifer Rizzotti, who won two championships as a player with the Houston Comets, has been the Sun’s team president since 2021, so her tenure includes the team’s run to the 2022 WNBA Finals. Morgan Tuck, who played four years with the Sun and won a title as a player with the Seattle Storm, has spent the past five years in the front office, moving into the general manager’s role in 2024.
“There are wonderful people coming over from the Sun,” Fertita said. “Jen Rizzoti has been there for a long time and done a wonderful job… Morgan Tuck, who has been there for a few years, has a WNBA championship in her own right and has done a fantastic job on helping build that team and running the team on the basketball side. It starts with people and I couldn’t be more excited, enthusiastic and confident in the people who are going to help run the organization here and the people that are going to transition over.”
The Comets likely will need a new head coach as Rachid Mezziane, who is in his his second season with the Sun, has accepted the head coaching job with a team in Turkey whose season runs October-April. That schedule technically wouldn’t interfere with the WNBA season, but it would be highly unlikely he would attempt to do both.
As for the business side of the operation, the Comets management plans to meet with the Connecticut side Monday and “we’re hopeful all of the Connecticut people will have an opportunity to move here,” Rockets president of business operations Gretchen Sheirr said.
The Comets did make one front office hire already, naming Kevin Pelton as the assistant general manager and vice president of analytics just before April’s WNBA draft. Pelton is known for his basketball analytics knowledge, putting it to use in ESPN’s coverage of both the NBA and WNBA, but also working as a consultant for the Indiana Pacers from 2010-12.
Good move to be as positive and welcoming towards the current team management as possible. Should make the transition a little easier on that end. I’ve already gotten an email about reserving a Comets tickets package (I’ve bought Rockets tickets before, so they have all my info), I’m sure we’ll explore some options. The old days were fun, but I think this time around will be better. Everyone else thinks so too.
The league recently signed new media rights agreements that total more than $3 billion over the next decade and just agreed with the players union on a new collective bargaining agreement that led to a massive jump in the salary cap and player compensation. The WNBA has 13 teams and will expand to 18 by 2030.
Fertitta and president of business operations Gretchen Sheirr pointed to the league’s growth as one of the key differences that could help the second iteration of the franchise.
“[Comets] 1.0 was a startup, right?” Sheirr said. “And now we’re 30 years later and these are big businesses that have huge corporate support, that have big fan bases, that have media rights, right? And so the landscape of how the business operates has definitely advanced, which provides more resources to create a great product on the court.”
Sheirr noted that women’s sports and the WNBA are at an all-time high, pointing to viewership and the new media rights agreement making the game available to all. That wasn’t the case in 1997, she said, when many couldn’t watch all Comets games.
While she said she wanted banners and championships as well — “I do not have a ring. I would love one,” she joked — Sheirr emphasized that she hoped to see a raucous home-court atmosphere for the Comets at Toyota Center. Houston’s WNBA franchise will play and practice in the building, which she said will undergo renovations over the next “16 to 17 months.”
Sheirr said the Comets have already had thousands of ticket deposits come through, a number she expected to grow now that the deal was official and the Comets could begin marketing campaigns.
“We want full buildings,” she said. “Everything has shown that this city has been clamoring for this team to come back, but that home court advantage and that fan base was really, really special and every indication so far says that it will be even better in 2.0.”
A huge factor in generating that passion could be keeping the same team name. There were reports that the team may struggle to get the Comets trademark but Sheirr said Thursday she felt confident that they’d keep the original name.
Fertitta said it was “immensely important” to use the same name.
“It honestly didn’t make a lot of sense to go any other direction,” he said. “There is such a special brand and identity that already exists. There is such history and nostalgia. … It wouldn’t feel right to have a different name, a different brand.”
He emphasized that Houstonians should not take the Comets’ past success for granted and instead hold it as a point of pride. It is now incumbent on all in the organization, he said, to continue that legacy. Fertitta assured that their commitment to that success and excellence would be evident throughout the Comets.
That’s the little asterisk I mentioned, that another entity currently holds the trademark for “Houston Comets”, which will obviously have to be resolved as soon as possible. That entity is associated with rapper Travis Scott, so one hopes he will be amenable to a deal. One way or the other, it’s gotta happen. No other name makes sense.