The home of the Miami Heat has another name: Miami-Dade Arena.
It will be the temporary nickname for the building where the NBA team plays its home games while the search for a permanent naming rights partner begins.
Heath and Miami-Dade County announced the new name on Friday, two days after a bankruptcy court terminated the county’s naming rights agreement with collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Earlier in the week, a county official said it would be called an “arena,” but those plans quickly changed.
“Effective immediately, Miami-Dade County and the Miami Heat have agreed to call the arena the Miami-Dade Arena until a new naming rights partner is in place,” the parties said in a statement. joint statement. “Removal of the facility’s existing signage and rebranding elements will continue in the coming weeks.”
The process of removing the FTX brand from all aspects of the arena will take some time.
The company’s logo appears on the field, is embroidered on many entrances, on the shirts worn by many security and game staff, on the roof of the arena and even on the swipe cards that employees use to enter the facility. .
The county filed a motion to void the naming rights agreement in November, saying at the time that continuing to call the building FTX Arena would only exacerbate the “ongoing difficulties” caused by the collapse. cryptocurrency exchange.
The county owns the arena and has negotiated a 19-year naming rights deal with FTX for $135 million.
The Heat, who have played in the building since Jan. 2, 2000, were slated to earn $2 million a year under a deal that went into effect in June 2021. The county and Heath say they will work together to find a new name. partner.
Prior to the FTX deal, the building had been called AmericanAirlines Arena since it opened in 1999.
The Miami-based airline giant said in 2019 it would not renew the deal after it expires on January 1, 2020. The name of the airline was retained on the building until 2021.
FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange, but it lost billions of dollars before filing for bankruptcy protection after a days-long spectacular crash — with estimates ranging from $8 billion to $10 billion.
Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested in the Bahamas last month and extradited to the United States to face criminal charges in what US Attorney Damian Williams called “one of the biggest frauds in American history.”
Bankman-Fried has been released on bail and is due to go to trial in October. He pleaded not guilty.
With post wires
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