Connecticut’s pensions shouldn’t make political investment in WNBA team

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has floated a plan to use state pension assets to purchase a stake in the Women’s National Basketball Association’s (WNBA) Connecticut Sun and keep the team from moving to Boston. Saving a local team may be good politics, but it is bad finance that would put taxpayers at risk.

Connecticut’s $60 billion Retirement Plans and Trust Funds exist to fund the retirement benefits promised to public workers, not to serve as a bailout vehicle for a professional sports franchise or to promote Connecticut’s economic development.

Gov. Lamont’s efforts to keep the Connecticut Sun in the state come as a Boston-based private equity group led by Celtics minority owner Steve Pagliuca reached a $325 million deal to buy the team and relocate it to Boston in 2027, pending league approval.

Connecticut’s state and local governments have recently made an impressive fiscal recovery after decades of budget neglect. The adoption of spending guardrails and mechanisms that enabled surplus pension contributions has stabilized finances, reduced bonded debt, improved pension funding, and led to credit rating upgrades. But recent fiscal improvements are no excuse for pursuing pension investments for political symbolism rather than financial merit.

The state’s fiscal job is unfinished: Connecticut still ranks second in the nation in terms of per-capita public employee debt (which includes unfunded pension and retiree healthcare liabilities). Furthermore, the state’s pension trust—which calculates contributions presuming a 7% annual return—has earned an average return of just 5.7% over the past 24 years (2001-2024), while the S&P 500 returned 10.6% over the same period, according to the Reason Foundation’s 2025 Annual Pension Solvency and Performance Report.

If the goal of this proposed investment in the Connecticut Sun were to maximize investment returns, it wouldn’t have been paraded in such a manner. A financially motivated investment is one where Connecticut’s pension funds would be comfortable selling at any time deemed advantageous; it is one where the state feels comfortable advocating for management decisions that benefit the team the most, which could very well mean moving out of Connecticut.

In fact, politically motivated investment harms not only the state’s pension plans but also the Connecticut Sun itself. The team would be better off with investors who are genuinely interested in its success, rather than ones whose primary goal is merely to retain the team in a particular geographical location, even if that is not conducive to the team’s ability to compete and win.

Sports teams can be great investments if managed correctly, but the upside comes with a delicate bundle of risks. Professional sports franchises are relatively illiquid, with valuations that fluctuate depending on revenue trends, media rights, and local market conditions. Future exit prospects are also limited, because—unlike an investment in a publicly traded company—only so many people/institutions are willing and able to buy a professional sports team.

If the Connecticut Sun turned out to be a bad investment for the state’s pension plan, public employees in the plan would likely not bear the harm: they are still guaranteed their retirement benefits regardless of investment outcomes or cost increases. The risk instead falls on taxpayers, who must cover any funding gap in the pension fund through higher property, income, and sales taxes.

Connecticut’s pension funds are fiduciary funds established to fund retirement obligations while avoiding unnecessary risk, not a piggy bank for pet political projects. Any sports investments, like all other pension fund investments, must be evaluated on a single criterion: maximizing risk-adjusted returns for beneficiaries and taxpayers.

A version of this column first appeared at The Connecticut Mirror.

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