L.A.'s Staples Center is now the Crypto.com Arena (yes, you read that correctly)
Los Angeles Lakers fans must be excited to attend future championships at something called Crypto.com Arena
L.A.’s Staples Center would like to welcome fellow teens to the Crypto.com Arena. Yup, the Staples Center has changed its name to fit with the times. Staples is out and Crypto is in.
Not that the arena, which is located in Downtown Los Angeles and marked “the dawn of a new era of sports-driven displacement and gentrification,” says The Nation, didn’t already have an incredibly tacky and unremarkable title. It’s just that the Crypto.com Arena really put it over the top.
Per The Los Angeles Times, the Singapore cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com struck a deal with AEG for the naming rights, which will remain in place for the next 20 years. All told, Crypto.com paid more than $700 million for the right to name the home of the L.A. sports teams the Lakers, Clippers, Kings, and Sparks. Still, it will be fun trying to explain what the hell Crypto.com is to future generations living through the climate apocalypse exacerbated by the mining of digital funny money.
“In the next few years, people will look back at this moment as the moment when crypto crossed the chasm into the mainstream,” Crypto.com’s chief executive, Kris Marszalek, told The Times. “This is just such a brilliant move from the guys at AEG, because the next decade belongs to crypto. And this positions L.A. and this particular venue right at the center of it.”