Lakers And Clippers May Not Be Playing At Crypto.com Arena For Much Longer Following Big Development

Crypto.com Arena exterior

Getty Image


The Lakers and the Clippers have shared an arena since they set up shop in what was originally known as the Staples Center when the venue opened for business in downtown Los Angeles in 1999.

When you consider that building is commonly referred to as “The House That Kobe Built,” it has been primarily associated with the purple and gold team that calls it home (the Clippers are slated to relocate to a state-of-the-art facility near SoFi Stadium in 2024).

Now, most sports fans don’t have an overwhelming emotional attachment to the corporations that shell out tens of millions of dollars to secure the naming rights to stadiums and arenas.

However, many people were less than thrilled to discover the venue (which is also the home of the NHL’s Kings and WNBA’s Sparks) would be rechristened as “Crypto.com Arena” after the company best known for its cringe-inducing ad featuring Matt Damon replaced Staples as the official naming partner in 2021.

Crypto.com reportedly agreed to shell out $700 million that was supposed to be paid out over the course of 20 years. However, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to fulfill its end of the deal when everything is said and done thanks to some news that surfaced on Friday.

According to Blockworks, Crypto.com has announced its plans to “suspend the institutional offering of the Crypto.com Exchange” in the United States on June 21st while citing “limited demand from institutions in the U.S. in the current market landscape.”

There’s currently been no official ruling on the fate of the arena’s name, but it seems very, very likely we could have an FTX Arena situation on our hands at some point in the near future; the venue that’s home to the Miami Heat rebranded as the “Kaseya Center” earlier this year in the wake of the monumental collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s massive house of cards. 

Following the publication of this article, a spokesperson for Crypto.com reached out to BroBible with a statement that reads in part, “Our Exchange update has no impact on the Crypto.com Arena naming rights” while adding the development “does not impact our Crypto.com retail app…in any way.”

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.