Miami-Dade County has asked the judge overseeing FTX’s bankruptcy to terminate the naming rights deal it struck with the crypto exchange or it will increase the amount it’s seeking in court.
A 19-year contract with FTX would have netted the county $135 million, but now it just wants out. After the county’s lawyers said it was owed $16.5 million by FTX for early termination of the naming rights agreement, it said in a court filing on Nov. 22 that it would add $5.5 million to that sum if the agreement isn’t officially terminated by Jan. 1.
The county said that the company’s financial collapse as well as “ensuing regulatory, civil, and criminal investigations” have put it in breach of the naming rights agreement struck last summer.
“These breaches appear to have been repeated, recurring and incurable,” lawyers for Miami-Dade County wrote in the filing.
At a virtual conference a few weeks after inking the deal, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was confident in the health of his company, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It’s been a pretty good year for us, to the point where frankly we don’t need to rely on the other 18 years to have the funds,” Bankman-Fried reportedly said at the time of the FTX Arena deal.
FTX’s bankruptcy earlier this month showed the company was anything but healthy, as SBF dipped into customer money invested in the crypto exchange to fund bets at his trading firm, Alameda Research.
In a filing by new FTX CEO John Ray III, the attorney and expert on insolvency cases said the company had displayed a “complete absence of trustworthy financial information.”
Some FTX signage on the exterior of the arena along Biscayne Bay has reportedly come down, but the building still displayed the FTX name as of the Heat’s last game on Nov. 25.
The arena opened in 1999 as the American Airlines Arena and kept that name until last year when the county teamed up with SBF’s crypto exchange.
FTX already paid Miami-Dade $14 million in 2021 and an additional $5.5 million this year toward the deal, funds that the county has since pledged to fight gun violence and poverty. The money was reportedly used to buy police equipment and fund youth summer camps, according to the Wall Street Journal.
