Miami-Dade County granted the right to remove the FTX name from the Heat arena

MIAMI — A naming rights deal between FTX and Miami-Dade County was terminated Wednesday by a federal bankruptcy court, allowing the brand of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange to be removed from the NBA’s Miami Heat.

The order means that in the near future – and probably will begin very soon – all FTX signs and advertisements in the arena will be removed. Neither Heath nor the county have said when the process will begin.

This will be a massive event. The FTX branding is displayed on the roof of the arena, on the basketball court, on many of the entrances, on the polo shirts worn by security personnel, and even on many of the electronic cards employees use to access the facility.

The termination of the rights deal “becomes effective immediately upon the effective date of this order,” wrote US Bankruptcy Judge John T. Dorsey.

The county asked for the naming rights deal to be terminated in November, saying that continuing to refer to the building as the FTX Arena would only exacerbate the “ongoing hardship” caused by the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange.

Marthe Lavandieu/AP

The county owns the arena and has entered into a 19-year, $135 million naming rights deal with FTX. The Heat were to receive $2 million annually as part of this deal, which went into effect in June 2021.

The next FTX payment due to the county was $5.5 million on January 1.

FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange, although it ended up with billions of dollars in losses – estimates range from $8 billion to $10 billion – to seeking bankruptcy protection after a spectacular accident that lasted only a few days.

Its founder, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, was arrested last month in the Bahamas and extradited to the USA to face criminal charges in what U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called “one of the biggest frauds in American history.” Bankman-Fried was released on bail. scheduled to appear in court in October.