The short-lived FTX Arena will now be known as Kaseya Center after the Miami-based software company purchased the naming rights to the county-owned arena for $117 million. The venue is home to the Miami Heat and hosts numerous concerts and entertainment events throughout the year.
After removing the FTX name following the collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange platform late last year, it had been known as Miami-Dade Arena, but the 17-year agreement with Kaseya Ltd. once again led to a change.
In 2021, FTX agreed to pay $135 million over 19 years to Miami-Dade County, a deal that ended after a federal bankruptcy judge approved the contract’s termination. Before the FTX name change, the center was initially called American Airlines Arena when it opened in 1999.
“We are proud to close this deal with a locally based company for the first time in the history of the arena,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava says in a statement.
Miami-Dade County worked with the Miami Heat to find new sponsorship deals, which included negotiations with five companies, according to the county. Starting in July, the team will receive $2 million annually from the Kaseya sponsorship.
“We were obviously as surprised as anybody else about what happened with FTX,” Eric Woolworth says, president of Business Operations for the Miami Heat. “It caught us completely off guard, but we were able to move really quickly.”
Kaseya is based out of the Bank of America Financial Center at 701 Brickell Ave. The global software company with over 1,000 employees was founded in 2000 and specializes in developing security and IT management tools.
Photo credit: Rolando Yera
