Every man has his price. The same goes for NBA arenas, and apparently that price is $700 million. That’s how much Crypto.com reportedly paid for the naming rights to Staples Center, home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks. The Clippers are also housed at Staples Center, though not for much longer with construction already underway on the Intuit Dome in neighboring Inglewood.
Beginning with the Lakers’ Christmas Day game against Brooklyn, Staples Center will hence forth be known as Crypto.com Arena, ending the office supply giant’s 22-year monopoly. Crypto.com’s unprecedented $700-million bid marks the largest naming rights deal in sports history, eclipsing the previous record held by SoFi Stadium, also in Los Angeles. The agreement is for 20 years.
As the line between sports and business gets blurrier with each passing day (can I interest you in a Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl?), teams have gotten increasingly shameless in their corporate sponsorships, endorsing brands and companies, seemingly at random. That would explain the Marlins’ recent naming rights deal with loanDepot and the clunkily-named Guaranteed Rate Field in Chicago. It was only a matter of time until teams dipped their toes into the crypto space, with Crypto.com Arena representing the first of what should be many sports venues to embody that theme.
Predictably, the Twitter peanut gallery wasted no time making a mockery of the Lakers, deriving plenty of humor from their new naming rights partnership.
Between Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Smoothie King Center in New Orleans and now Crypto.com Arena, it’s clear that when it comes to naming rights, the NBA is open for business.
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