Miami’s waterfront basketball arena where the Miami Heat play is getting a new name after becoming a symbol of the spectacular collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
(Bloomberg) — Miami’s waterfront basketball arena where the Miami Heat play is getting a new name after becoming a symbol of the spectacular collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Miami-Dade County and software company Kaseya Ltd. have reached a $117 million contract that will rename the arena Kaseya Center for the next 17 years. The transaction approved by the county on Tuesday came together less then three months after a bankruptcy judge terminated FTX’s naming-rights contract as Sam Bankman-Fried’s business spiraled into bankruptcy.
“FTX created a challenging situation, and I’m sure there’s been some reputation damage for us,” said Eric Woolworth, who heads business operations for the NBA’s Miami Heat. “The industry that Kaseya is in has a much longer history and is more stable than crypto.”
It’s a striking turn for a city that before FTX collapsed spent years courting crypto businesses, doing everything from hosting Bitcoin conferences to having a robo-version of the charging bull statue installed downtown.
Miami-based Kaseya sells IT services and security software to small and mid-sized businesses. Splashing its name on the Miami arena will help it become better known, Chief Executive Officer Fred Voccola said in an interview. The company has about 1,000 employees in the city, and Voccola said the arena deal will help attract talent. In 2021, the company suffered a Russia-linked ransomware attack, which it resolved by working with federal authorities and a cybersecurity consultant.
Miami will ultimately walk out with a similar deal than the one it had with FTX, though Kaseya will end up making lower payments in the first years of the deal. Before going bankrupt, FTX completed two years and paid nearly $20 million of its original 19-year, $135-million agreement.
Even though firms like UBS Group AG and iHeartMedia had expressed some interest in taking over for FTX, only one other company presented a competing offer, said the county’s chief operations officer, Jimmy Morales. It was Aroma 360, a scent-diffuser company that offered a lower bid than Kaseya’s.
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