Miami Heat’s home arena given temporary name after FTX collapse

MIAMI (AP) — The home of the Miami Heat has another name: Miami-Dade Arena.

This will be the temporary name of the building where an NBA team plays its home games while the search for a more permanent naming rights partner begins.

Heath County and Miami-Dade announced the new name on Friday, two days after a bankruptcy court terminated the county’s naming rights deal with the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. A county official earlier this week said it would be called The Arena, though those plans quickly changed.

“With immediate effect, Miami-Dade County and the Miami Heat have agreed that until a new naming rights partner is in place, the arena will be known as the Miami-Dade Arena,” the parties said in a joint statement. “The removal of the site’s existing signage and replacement of branding elements will continue in the coming weeks.”

The process of removing the FTX branding from all aspects of the arena will take some time. The company logo appears on the court, at many of the entrances, is embroidered on the shirts worn by many of the security guards and playing staff, is on the roof of the arena, and has even been placed on the cards employees use to access the facility.

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

The county owns the arena and has entered into a 19-year, $135 million naming rights deal with FTX. The Heat, who have been playing in the building since January 2, 2000, were to receive $2 million annually in this deal, which went into effect in June 2021. County and Heath say they will work together to find a new naming partner.

Prior to the FTX deal, the building had been known as AmericanAirlines Arena since it opened in 1999. The airline, which has a hub in Miami, said in 2019 that it would not renew its deal after it expired on January 1st. 2020 Airline name remained on the building until 2021

FTX was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange, though it ended up taking billions of dollars in losses — estimates range from $8 billion to $10 billion — before filing for bankruptcy protection after a spectacular crash that lasted only a few days.

Its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, 30, was arrested last month in the Bahamas and extradited to the US to face criminal charges in what US Attorney Damian Williams called “one of the biggest frauds in American history.” Bankman-Fried was released on bail and is due to appear in court in October. He pleaded not guilty.

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