FTX buys naming rights to Cal Memorial Stadium for 10 years in $17.5M deal

FTX has purchased the naming rights to the Cal Memorial Stadium in its second major sports branding venture after buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat arena in March.

Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has purchased the naming rights to the University of California’s Cal Memorial Stadium with a view to introducing its own branding.

The Sam Bankman-Fried-owned derivatives exchange is delving deeper into sports after signing a 10-year, $17.5-million naming rights deal with the university. 

The stadium’s home team, the California Golden Bears, will now play its games at newly rebranded FTX Field this football season, according to Bloomberg. The $17.5 million will also be paid to the university in the form of crypto assets.

The deal is FTX’s latest foray into sponsoring sports to drum up awareness of crypto.

In March, the North American division of the exchange, FTX.US, entered into a naming rights deal with the Miami Heat basketball team. The partnership saw the team’s home arena rebranded to FTX Arena.

The company is also the official crypto exchange of Major League Baseball (MLB). As part of the sponsorship deal, which is expected to last for at least five years, every MLB umpire will don an FTX patch on their uniform.

The Cal Memorial stadium is located in Alameda County, the namesake of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research. 

Some of FTX’s executives also have long-standing ties to the Cal Golden Bears, with chief operating officer Sina Nader having been a walk-on member of the Golden Bears when he was an undergraduate.

Related: FTX becomes official crypto sponsor of MLB

In June, seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady and his wife, Gisele Bündchen, partnered with FTX to promote crypto adoption. The deal saw Brady and Bündchen each take equity stakes in FTX and receive crypto.

On July 20, Cointelegraph reported that FTX smashed the crypto funding record with a $900-million raise to become an “exchange decacorn” — a company worth over $10 billion.