Heat arena now officially known as the Kaseya Center. The story behind the latest name change
The Miami Heat’s county-owned building that was long known as AmericanAirlines Arena and was briefly called FTX Arena before moving to the temporary labels of The Arena and Miami-Dade Arena has a new name: Kaseya Center.
On Tuesday, Miami-Dade County commissioners unanimously approved the $117 million naming-rights agreement with a booming software company headquartered in the city’s Brickell Avenue district. The 17-year agreement mostly matches the promised payments that disappeared from the arena’s prior sponsor, the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. After becoming the arena’s sponsor in 2021, FTX collapsed into bankruptcy late last year.
Upon Tuesday’s approval, the name of the Heat’s home arena immediately changed to Kaseya Center (pronounced kuh-SAY-ah). That means Kaseya Center will be the label used to describe the site of Saturday’s UFC event in Miami, the Heat’s regular-season finale on Sunday against the Orlando Magic and potential Heat home playoff games in the weeks ahead.
The Kaseya logo is expected to already be on the Heat’s court for Sunday’s matchup against the Magic.
Heat president of business operations Eric Woolworth said the Heat has “been involved from the beginning helping [Miami-Dade] County find the right partner, helping the negotiations proceed.”
“We’ve been pretty involved,” Woolworth said. “I think what the story is here is how quickly we were able to pivot and move on from FTX and find not only a new partner, but Kaseya is a local company. They’re hiring a lot of people here, it’s a great story and I think everybody is really happy with the outcome.
“I think the whole thing is a tribute to [county Mayor Daniella Levine Cava] and her leadership and [county chief operating officer] Jimmy Morales, they’ve all been just incredibly professional and focused on this issue and they gave it the time that it deserved. So I think we’re happy, I know Kaseya is happy and I think the county is happy.”
The Heat negotiated the naming-rights deal with American Airlines in the 1990s, but Miami-Dade exercised its option to take over naming rights in 2018 in exchange for guaranteeing the team a $2 million yearly payment starting in 2020. Those $2 million annual payments will continue under the agreement with Kaseya.
The new agreement also continues to reserve sponsorship money for the county to fund programs aimed at reducing gun violence as part of the “Peace and Prosperity Plan,” which was part of Miami-Dade’s agreement with FTX that has since been terminated.
“Honestly, one of the things about the deal that we are most proud of is that the anti-gun violence program at the county is going to continue to get funded without any interruption,” Woolworth said. “That was part of the rush, as well. We wanted to make sure that the county was made whole and could continue to fund that program, which we think is really important.”
The Heat is also entering its own “long-term partnership” with Kaseya to make the company “the official IT solutions partner of the Miami Heat.”
“I’m looking forward to welcoming Kaseya to the family,” Woolworth said.
The agreement delivers a spike in exposure for Kaseya, a privately held company with about 900 employees in Miami spread over four offices in the Brickell Avenue area. The company recently announced plans to hire 3,000 more employees in Miami, securing a pledge of $4.6 million in subsidies from Miami-Dade if the hiring goals are met.
The company, which sells IT software, has 18 offices in the United States and 14 more worldwide, with 4,500 employees in all.
“As one of the most iconic venues in the world, we could not be more excited to officially rename the arena as the Kaseya Center and partner with the Miami Heat,” Kaseya CEO Fred Voccola said in a statement. “Miami is our home, and having Kaseya showcased globally as synonymous with Miami is something we’re very proud of, and will provide significant value to our customers, employees, and the community.
“The Miami Heat are widely recognized as a championship-level organization that has attained the highest levels of success, both on the court and in the community. As Kaseya has grown into the global leader in IT and security management software, we’re honored to partner with an iconic franchise that mirrors our own passion to achieve great things.”
The hope is that this will be the building’s final name change for the foreseeable future. The switch to FTX Arena in June 2021 marked the venue’s first name change since it opened in 1999 on New Year’s Eve, but it has since been changed to The Arena before becoming Miami-Dade Arena a few days later in January after the agreement with FTX was terminated, and now it will be known as Kaseya Center.
“Listen, it’s not ideal,” Woolworth said of all the changes over the last two years. “We’re not running away from that. What happened with FTX blindsided us. We weren’t obviously anticipating that and it’s been a challenging year. But we’re super happy that we’re putting that behind us and moving ahead really as fast any deal has ever been done in this industry. We’re proud of that.”
And the county is confident Kaseya will have a longer run as the arena’s sponsor than FTX did.
“Kaseya is a well-established company with 20 years of experience in a growing market and a $2 billion valuation,” Levine Cava said. “Additionally, the company has provided an irrevocable letter of credit from their financial institution that guarantees the next 18 months of contractual revenue, which helps ensure the sustainability of this agreement.”
All of the FTX signage around the arena has been gone for months. The FTX logo was also removed from the roof of the building.
Kaseya signage will soon be prominent around the arena, along with gameday features, digital content, community engagements, entitlement of the long-standing veterans initiative and more. Kaseya is currently the presenting sponsor of the Miami Heat Bounce Back from Cancer initiative, which raised $6.4 million since 2019 for cancer research.
“Yes, they will be out front, they will be on the roof, they will be on the court, all that,” Woolworth said.
This story was originally published April 4, 2023 at 1:04 PM.
