Cal athletic department severs ties with FTX one week after the crypto exchange declared bankruptcy

Cal Athletics has suspended its naming rights partnership with embattled crypto exchange FTX, becoming the latest high-profile sports organization to sever ties with the company after it filed for bankruptcy.

‘LEARFIELD’s Cal Bears Sports Properties, working in collaboration with Cal Athletics, has suspended the FTX naming rights sponsorship with Cal Athletics,’ read a department statement, provided to DailyMail.com.

FTX previously paid $17.5 million for a 10-year naming rights deal for Cal-Berkeley’s football field, California Memorial Stadium. 

The Pac-12 school said it would be sticking with FTX as recently as Friday, telling Front Office Sports that it the brand was a ‘great partner.’

School officials changed their mind on Thursday.  

Previously, Miami-Dade County (Florida) terminated its relationship with FTX, which had purchased the naming rights to the Heat’s home arena in 2021. The company also had major sports sponsorships with Formula One racing and a sponsorship deal with Major League Baseball.

Cal Athletics has suspended its naming rights partnership with embattled crypto exchange FTX , becoming the latest high-profile sports organization to sever ties with the company after it filed for bankruptcy

CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned, the company said. Bankman-Fried was recently estimated to be worth $23 billion and has been a prominent political donor to Democrats. His net worth has all but evaporated, according to Forbes and Bloomberg, which closely track the net worth of the world’s richest people

Previously, Miami-Dade County ( Florida ) terminated its relationship with FTX, which had purchased the naming rights to the Heat’s home arena in 2021

Mercedes said it would remove FTX from its race cars starting this weekend, while the NBA’s Golden State Warriors have also suspended their partnership with the exchange. 

It took less than a week for FTX to go from the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world to bankruptcy court.

The embattled cryptocurrency exchange, short billions of dollars, sought bankruptcy protection after the exchange experienced the crypto equivalent of a bank run. FTX, the hedge fund Alameda Research, and dozens of other affiliated companies filed a bankruptcy petition in Delaware on Friday morning. FTX US, which originally was not expected to be included in any financial rescue, was also part of the company’s bankruptcy filing.

CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned, the company said. Bankman-Fried was recently estimated to be worth $23 billion and has been a prominent political donor to Democrats. His net worth has all but evaporated, according to Forbes and Bloomberg, which closely track the net worth of the world’s richest people.

‘I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier in the week,’ Bankman-Fried wrote in a series of posts on Twitter.

Mercedes said it would remove FTX from its race cars starting this weekend

FTX’s unraveling is causing ripple effects. Already companies that backed FTX are writing down their investments. Politicians and regulators are ramping up calls for stricter oversight of the crypto industry. And this latest crisis has put pressure on the prices of bitcoin and other digital currencies. The total market value of all digital currencies dropped by about $150 billion in the last week, according to CoinMarketCap.com.

Bankman-Fried has other problems as well. On Thursday, a person familiar with the matter said the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission were looking into FTX to determine whether any criminal activity or securities offenses were committed. The person could not discuss details of the investigations publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.