Miami Heat's FTX Arena era is over

FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange when it made a deal with the Heat and Miami-Dade County to rename American Airlines Arena, which had borne that name since it opened in 1999. The naming rights agreement was supposed to run for 19 years, while the team and the county would split the $135 million (roughly $2 million annually to the team, more than $5 million to the county).

However, with FTX in bankruptcy and founder Sam Bankman-Fried facing federal fraud charges for stealing billions of dollars from investors, the team and county weren't going to see any of that money. Perhaps it was rash to ink an 19-year deal with a company that, at the time, was less than two years old.

After signing the deal, Bankman-Fried was confident about honoring the long commitment, announcing at a "virtual summit" that FTX had a "pretty good year." Bankman-Fried said the company could pay out the full deal up front, saying, "Frankly, we don't need to rely on the other 18 years to have the funds for this. So, it's been a phenomenal year for a number of businesses, and for the crypto industry in particular. And then I think us, even more so. And so, that's given us a pretty big cushion."

Not a big enough cushion, it appears.

What's next? First, the Heat have to take down a lot of FTX signage, from a sign on the roof to the court to the polo shirts that arena workers wear. They'll also have to remove veteran Udonis Haslem's FTX commercial from their TV broadcasts, where it runs incessantly.

Haslem says he lost $15 million in equity in FTX when the exchange crashed, and he's also a defendant in a class-action lawsuit against FTX and its celebrity endorsers.

That's not the Heat's only entanglement with the world of crypto. The team's shooting shirts bear the logo of Chain, a "blockchain infrastructure startup." Chain is the "exclusive Web3 and blockchain infrastructure partner" of the Heat, though it's not clear what that entails.

The Heat may not be the only NBA team facing an arena name crisis. The Los Angeles Lakers have a $700 million naming rights deal with Crypto.com that runs for 20 years. Its coin (CRO) has lost nearly 90% of its value over the past year, meaning the firm is not doing well.

There's no word on what the arena's new name will be, but we suggest naming it after Haslem, who is in his 20th season with the team. Sure, he's 42 years old, but his career still might outlast all the crypto companies.