When news broke that AEG had agreed to a deal with Crypto.com for the naming rights to Staples Center, it came as a shock to virtually everyone, and spawned a rain of jokes on social media. It was a jarring change for the Lakers’ arena, a building long considered a staple — pun intended — of downtown Los Angeles.
It was a move that came as a result of many things, and once more details began to surface, it became clearer why AEG made the decision it did. Specifically, they had about 700 million reasons to hand the naming rights over and absorb all the jokes that came with it, a fairly easy decision in the grand scheme of things.