Arena heads for Kaseya branding for $117 million

“Kaseya Center” is the new name Miami-Dade County commissioners chose unanimously Tuesday for the county-owned arena at 601 Biscayne Blvd.

Pending approval after a public hearing, the county will assign naming and sponsorship rights to Kaseya US LLC for a 17-year term and a payment of $117.3 million.

The Miami-based company is a global provider of IT management and security software. With local offices at 701 Brickell Ave., the company was founded in 2000 and is privately held with a presence in over 10 countries.

After expenses, which will include a payment to the Miami Heat each year, the county’s revenues are to benefit the “anti-gun violence and prosperity initiatives” trust fund, the resolution states.

Those same initiatives were targeted as beneficiaries of the prior naming rights pact with FTX, the high-flying cryptocurrency trading giant that collapsed into bankruptcy in a one-week period late in 2022, causing turmoil through the high-tech financial world. The early FTX payments were directed at those initiatives.

With the FTX bankruptcy, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava wrote to commissioners in January, “the arena is no longer named the FTX Arena, and the county can now legally seek a new sponsorship agreement.”

That led to one quick renaming and then another, with the arena under three different names in a matter of days. Tuesday’s action, if approved on a final commission vote, is to stabilize the name for 17 years.

Previously, the arena had been AmericanAirlines under a 20-year, $42 million sponsorship agreement that expired Dec. 31, 2019. But the airline before expiration informed the county that it would not continue sponsorship. That set off a chase for sponsors as the county in 2018 hired the Superlative Group to get a new name sponsor. That ultimately led to FTX.

Tuesday’s resolution includes a $45,000 finder’s fee to PFM Financial Advisors LLC “for assistance in identifying a naming rights sponsor for the arena.” The fee would be paid by “revenues generated by the naming rights agreement,” the resolution states. An additional $24,000 would be paid to Investigative Management Group “for due diligence work.”

PFM Financial Advisors LLC is a worldwide financial company with headquarters in Princeton, NJ. Investigative Management Group, with headquarters in New York City, specializes in corporate security and investigative services.

The county-owned arena was built for and is occupied by the Miami Heat basketball team, which has joint say with the county on the arena’s naming rights partner. Previously, the county had paid Basketball Properties, the Heat affiliate that runs the arena, $2 million yearly from American’s naming rights money plus about $6.4 million. Commissioners in 2018 replaced that deal with the current one, in which the county pays the manager the $2 million a year whether or not it has a sponsor but keeps whatever it gets from a sponsor.

After American’s agreement ended, the county had no sponsor and still had to pay the $2 million to Basketball Properties until it signed FTX.

In January, after FTX was no longer a player, commissioners questioned Mayor Levine Cava about when a new sponsor would be found. She replied, “There are companies coming forward speaking to our staff, to the Heat…. Obviously, we’re in a different position than we were two years ago and we’re very hopeful that we’ll be able to secure a very different deal in the near future.”