On Wednesday morning, Hugo Garcia had to check his phone to believe it was real.
The Staples Center will soon be called the Crypto.com Arena after the rights to the name went to the highest bidder – reportedly over $ 700 million.
“It’s just awful,” said 29-year-old Garcia wearing a Lakers hat at the entrance to the arena in downtown Los Angeles.
As a child, Garcia watched Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neill lead the Lakers to the arena championship.
Now that he is in his third year at Loyola Law School, he often travels to the area with friends, although he hasn’t stepped into the arena since the pandemic began.
He called the arena “the cultural epicenter of Los Angeles” and “a staple of the Los Angeles community.”
The community should have received more feedback on the name change, he said.
“It is very important to consult with the stakeholders, the community, you know what I mean? It had to be a process, ”he said.
The new name does not seem “memorable” to 54-year-old Antonia Kitchen, who came from the Detroit area.
She was walking around the neighborhood, awaiting the start of a press conference in preparation for the Los Angeles Auto Show later this week.
She is an account manager for a marketing company and Subaru is her client.
Kitchen has only visited the Staples Center once, but says the area is “just synonymous with the Staples name.”
“When you think of this name, you think of the memories and things that you experienced at the Staples Center,” she said. “So by changing the name, it will be a little different.”
But for cryptocurrency investors like brothers Kevin and Brian Segura, the new name, which will debut on December 25, was exciting.
“What a great introduction to cryptocurrency for the public,” said 19-year-old Kevin Segura, who recently moved to Los Angeles, who became interested in cryptocurrency at the start of the pandemic.
Given the arena’s global prominence, he expects the new name to bring the concept of digital currency to a much wider audience.
“If they don’t know what cryptocurrency is, they will be interested in cryptocurrency,” he said.
