With a year left on American Airlines’ original sponsorship deal for the Miami Heat’s arena on Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade on Tuesday decided to take over talks for the next naming-rights agreement for the county-owned building.
The Heat privately opposed the move, which is allowed under the team’s 2014 updated lease for the county arena. The existing arena deal costs Miami-Dade about $5.5 million in annual subsidies, and the county receives almost no revenue from the $2 million that American pays the Heat each year to be the public building’s title sponsor under a naming-rights deal first struck in the 1990s.