Could the WNBA expand to Boston? A Mohegan executive says no ...

Local News New England's only WNBA team is the Connecticut Sun. Coach Stephanie White (left) and the Sun's DeWanna Bonner (center) and DiJonai Carrington (right) fell short of advancing to the WNBA finals this week.

As the WNBA expands across North America, don’t expect a franchise to come to Boston — at least not if Ray Pineault has anything to say about it.

As the president and CEO of Mohegan — the business arm of the Mohegan Tribe, which owns the Connecticut Sun — Pineault has close ties to New England’s only WNBA team. In his eyes, the region doesn’t have room for a competitor franchise.

“I don’t want another WNBA franchise in Boston,” Pineault told Bookies.com. “As the league grows, we’re going to continue to see growth. We get Massachusetts and Rhode Island fans who come to our games now. I wouldn’t be a big fan of having a Boston team.”

Boston has been the target of conversation around expansion in women’s sports in recent years. With the launch of the PWHL’s Boston Fleet last year and the announcement of a yet-to-be-named NWSL team starting play in 2026, many see a WNBA franchise as a logical next step for the city’s sports landscape.

Not Pineault.

“We want more Massachusetts fans to see the product that we’re putting on the floor,” he said. “I’m a Celtics fan, and I drive up to Massachusetts from Connecticut to go see the Celtics. I want people from Massachusetts to feel the same way about coming to see the Connecticut Sun.”

The Sun, perennial championship contenders who have come up short of the title in each of the last five seasons, were bounced from the playoffs by the Minnesota Lynx in the semifinals earlier this week.

WNBA commissioner Cathy Englebert expressed a hope that the league would have 16 teams by 2028, and a sold-out game between the Sun and the LA Sparks at TD Garden in August had many fans buzzing about a possible expansion team in Boston. But Pineault pointed out a potential roadblock for that to happen.

“There are protections within franchise-protected areas. The League would have to get the franchise owners within those regions to agree to it, but the league is going to continue to expand and grow,” Pineault said.

“I think that that is the right thing to do. However, they also want to get into other parts of the United States. They’re in the Northeast with us and New York right now, but they’re not really on the West Coast as much. They have the [Los Angeles] Sparks and that’s really it. To expand and bring more people in, bring more regions in, is the right thing for the league to continue to do.”

The WNBA has recently announced expansion teams in the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, and Toronto — all of which are set to begin play in the next three years — bringing the league’s total to 15.

While Pineault doesn’t want the league to expand in Boston, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the end of the road for the WNBA in Massachusetts’s capital city.

“I do think we’re going to continue to work in Boston,” Pineault said. “We want to bring our product to Boston.”