In November 2021, the management of the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles announced the venue’s renaming as Crypto.com Arena, for at least the next 20 years. The move caps an agreement between AEG Worldwide, owner of the center, and the fast-growing cryptocurrency trading platform Crypto.com.

Crypto.com reportedly paid $700 million for the privilege of seeing its name in lights at the center. Experts say this is likely the most expensive naming rights deal in sports history. 

Three decades of sports and entertainment 

For more than 30 years, the Staples Center has served as a premier destination for hundreds of high-profile events, including NBA All-Star Games, Disney on Ice events, the World Figure Skating Championships, and numerous Grammy Award productions. Musical acts that have performed at the center over the decades include U2, Paul McCartney, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift, and many other top names. 

But the Staples Center is perhaps even better known as the permanent home of four of the country’s most popular professional sports franchises: the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers teams, the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, and the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings.

The official renaming event and revelation of the center’s new logo was set to take place on Christmas Day at a match-up between the Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets. The fanfare is all in keeping with Los Angeles’ position in the entertainment and sports industries as well as the Staples Center’s role within such a company town. 

That was fast

For being at the center of such a big deal in 2021, Crypto.com emerged from humble beginnings. In 2017 the URL referred solely to a personal blog, the project of a professor of computer science at the University of Pennsylvania. The then-obscure company that took over the professor’s blog transformed the web address into a buy-sell-trade extravaganza for the emergent crypto community. It now offers debit cards backed by cryptocurrency, digital wallets, and other financial products. 

Crypto.com was originally established in 2016 under the name Monaco and is still privately held, having yet solicited zero dollars in institutional funding. It maintains a head office in Singapore with branches in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Malta. 

In the year leading up to its acquisition of naming rights at the Staples Center, Crypto.com concluded a string of other high-profile sports sponsorships, including partnering with the Montreal Canadiens and purchasing naming rights to the Philadelphia 76ers’ uniform patches.