Kaseya wasn’t supposed to be here. Nonetheless, the IT software company’s name is all over the Miami Heat’s arena during the NBA Finals, and its employees and clients shared a coveted suite for Game 2 of the series against the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night.
Remember FTX? Two years ago, the crypto company promised Miami-Dade County $135 million over 19 years for those naming rights and benefits. But then Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire crumbled amid scandal last fall. By April, Kaseya had swooped in with a 17-year, $117 million offer of its own.
That deal doesn’t technically start until July 1 of this year, “but we were eager to turn the page on a bad situation,” Heat Group chief commercial officer John Vidalin explained in a statement to Sportico. Signage was added to the building in time for UFC 287 on April 8. A day later, the new Kaseya Center logo graced the floor for the Miami Heat’s final regular-season home game, a nice bonus before the partnership truly began. Then the Heat hosted a Play-In Game the next week. They won, obviously, and have kept winning, though they surrendered home court advantage to the Nuggets with a 109-94 defeat Wednesday.
The Heat weren’t supposed to be here, either. Their Cinderella run through the NBA playoffs as the No. 8 seed has brought millions in earned media for a heretofore little-known company attempting a classic sports sponsorship strategy. Kaseya has paid for some specific activations, but hasn’t yet spent a dime on the broader naming rights agreement.
FTX’s November bankruptcy left a major revenue hole in south Florida, but there was at least some upside to the spectacular nature of its collapse. “Being on the front page of every newspaper was pretty good advertising for us,” Heat president of business operations Eric Woolworth said in April. “We got a lot of interest.”
Kaseya CMO Mike Sanders was among those who spotted an opportunity. He pitched CEO Fred Voccola on making an offer for the suddenly available naming rights. “It took me about five seconds,” Voccola said. “I went from ‘What a dumb idea’ to ‘Oh my god, that’s brilliant.’”
Kaseya’s marketing team, including EVP Xavier Gonzalez, identified two reasons for moving forward with the venue sponsorship. First, the 23-year-old company, which primarily offers IT solutions that service providers then use to manage systems for small and mid-size businesses, was looking to hire 3,000 people in Miami. It had moved to the city in 2018 and added $500 million, including from TPG Capital, to fuel its growth. Second, as it continues to expand, the company is trying to develop its brand awareness among those end customers (local dentist or law offices, for example).
“For all the small businesses around the world that are using technology services, we want them saying, ‘Whoever I use, they gotta be powered by Kaseya,’” Voccola said.
Voccola likened the strategy to Intel’s pivotal “Intel Inside” campaign, which convinced computer buyers to value the microchip, thus increasing the company’s leverage with manufacturers. Sports played a big role in that effort; Intel has partnered with the likes of the San Francisco 49ers and the Olympics.
Kaseya is already seeing results in the two months since the signage went up. Voccola said every job the company posts for Miami now sees 64% more applications. Outbound strategic partnership inquiries, meanwhile, are getting responses 41% more often. Previously, those numbers might move by 2% in a month.
“It’s like saying, normally you might walk up a little hill, all of a sudden we climbed Mt. Everest,” Voccola said. “The Miami Heat… are the best business partner I’ve ever worked with.”
Nielsen Sports calculated that, heading into the Finals, Kaseya received $8.6 million in media value for its in-venue assets on linear TV. According to Apex Marketing Group metrics, each Finals game Miami hosts could be worth an additional $20.7 million in brand exposure. (Apex president Eric Smallwood noted that that estimation is lower than the one for Ball Arena in Denver largely due to where the companies’ logos are placed on the respective courts).
“The typical profile of a company that benefits the most [from a naming rights deal] is a company that’s growing, that wants to use sports as a platform for growth and where brand awareness is an important strategic consideration,” Excel Sports Management VP, business insights and analytics, Adam Grossman said. “I think there’s definitely more B2B companies that are examining naming-rights partnerships because there is a clear economic case.”
GlobalData analyst Jacob Kemp pointed out that it can take time for a partnership of this size to be fully maximized, though a deep playoff run can help cement the association more quickly in fans’ minds. And so far, there’s been no indication that FTX’s implosion may have weakened the degree to which fans anywhere think “if the brand is good enough for my favorite team, it must be good enough for me.”
For his part, Voccola has yet to go to a playoff game in the Kaseya Center. “I would love to go to a Finals game,” he said, “but I ain’t going, because we probably have 5,000 customers that have asked to go.”
Kaseya hadn’t done a similar deal to this one, so it’s still figuring out how best to allocate its access, even as it now comes into possession of the hottest ticket in town.
Given the opportunity he created for Kaseya, Bankman-Fried would have a strong case for being worthy of one of those stubs—if he wasn’t under house arrest.