Fed up of hearing people bang on about cryptocurrency all the time? Well, we have some bad news for you.
The Los Angeles Staples Center, home to the LA Lakers and probably one of the world’s most iconic arenas, has had itself a little rebrand — and at first glance the new name looks like something you might find in a late show parody sketch:
Yep, it’s not a joke.
On Wednesday, the Staples Center got a “formerly known as” tacked in front of it, and a brand new name was announced: the Crypto.com Arena, named after “the world’s fastest growing crypto app” as part of a brand deal presumably worth quite a bit of money. The app is a crypto debit card and exchange company that allows owners to get cashback while also being a platform for trading coins and NFTs.
It’s worth noting that stadiums changing their names as part of brand deals isn’t a new or uncommon thing — the whole “Staples” bit in Staples Center, after all, was there as part of a 20-year deal with the U.S. office supply company of the same name. But there is still something sort of funny about a name with “.com” at the end of it — maybe it would have sounded a little less jarring if it was just being renamed “Crypto Arena”, but it is a little hard to imagine people saying the full name out loud – including the “dot com” bit – when they discuss their plans to see a game that weekend.
As you can probably imagine, not everyone was too happy about the name change:
Jokes about “The Crypt” rolled out too.
Still, there were some defenders, too:
According to the LA Times, the arena’s name won’t just change — “3,300 square feet will become a dedicated Crypto dot com ‘activation space’ featuring crypto-centric interactive experiences for sports or music fans.” Sure.
Chances are the name will get more pushback for a while, but people will slowly start getting used to it. Hey — they’ll have another 20 years to.