American Airlines Arena, home of the Miami Heat NBA team, may be getting a name change following the expiration of the deal with American Airlines. According to a report, the Arena’s name may be picked up by FTX Trading, a cryptocurrency trading platform.
First covered by the Miami Herald, SportsProMedia states that FTX Arena accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook have been completed.
The domain ftxarena.com has been registered on Godaddy.
American Airline’s deal expired in 2019. The 20-year agreement was said to be worth $2.1 million per year. The new deal is expected to run until the 2030 NBA season. If the deal closes, this will be a first for a crypto platform to purchase naming rights for an NBA arena.
The city of Miami has recently generated headlines with its crypto-friendly approach and embrace of Fintech innovation. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez recently announced via Twitter that he has requested the city manager to research a vendor to facilitate Bitcoin payments as well as paying employees in Bitcoin.
FTX is a crypto exchange that offers derivatives, options, volatility products, and leveraged tokens. The company states that they strive to “develop a platform robust enough for professional trading firms and intuitive enough for first-time users.” FTX is also affiliated with Alameda Research, another crypto-focused firm.
Recently, popular cryptocurrencies have risen in value. Bitcoin is now trading at around $56,000 – near an all-time high. At the start of 2021, Bitcoin was trading at around$30,000. The crypto has helped to mint a growing number of crypto millionaires and billionaires.
FTX reports that during 2020, trading volume and users grew “tremendously.”
To quote FTX:
“This was an explosive year for FTX volumes, increasing by over 1,000% compared to last year with over $385,000,000,000 traded in total and an average daily volume of $1,060,000,000, while setting a new all time high (ATH) of >$7,000,000,000 in one day; to put that in perspective, in 2019 we saw only 1 day with over >$1bn in volume, marking our then-ATH, which is lower than our 2020 daily average. In December alone, we’ve done nearly 200% of our 2019 volume in its entirety, and in one day this year we did more volume than the entire month of December 2019. Also of note, we just recently had our first day of >$1,000,000,000 in daily volume on our spot markets.”