Pitbull Stadium the new home of Florida International football as artist bought the naming rights

Welcome to Pitbull Stadium, the location of your FIU Panthers.

Florida International announced what could extremity up arsenic a 10-year statement connected Tuesday with planetary signaling artist, Grammy victor and entrepreneur Armando Christian Pérez - the Miami autochthonal amended known arsenic Pitbull - to enactment his sanction connected their on-campus stadium.

Pérez volition wage $1.2 cardinal annually for the adjacent 5 years, the assemblage said, for the naming rights. He volition person an enactment successful August 2029 to widen the woody for different 5 years and proceed the rebranding.

"Yes, we're going to make past successful Pitbull Stadium," Pérez said during a quality league successful Miami. "This isn't conscionable an announcement. This is simply a movement. This is genuinely past successful the making."

FIU said it is the archetypal statement wherever an creator possesses the naming rights to a stadium. Pérez volition besides beryllium progressive with FIU's efforts successful the name, representation and likeness space, diversion manager Scott Carr said.

"This is simply a historical time for FIU athletics to uniquely spouse with a world-renowned creator and astonishing idiosyncratic who genuinely values relationships and his community," Carr said. "Armando's fiscal enactment is program-changing, but him providing a microphone to amplify FIU volition beryllium adjacent much beneficial to increasing our brand."

As portion of the deal, Pérez gets usage of the stadium for 10 days each twelvemonth rent-free, with immoderate tickets to those events to beryllium acceptable speech for FIU students. A vodka marque helium owns volition beryllium a preferred marque astatine the stadium going forward, helium volition person usage of 2 suites and 20 VIP parking passes for FIU shot location games, and he's being asked to make an "FIU Anthem" to beryllium played astatine the school's diversion contests.

"It's a existent blessing, a existent honor," Pérez said. "Let's marque history."

Pitbull - who besides goes by "Mr. 305," a motion to Miami's country codification - kicked disconnected his euphony vocation successful the South Florida rap country astir 2004, yet becoming 1 of the world's astir recognized artists.

"Pitbull's vocation trajectory mirrors FIU's ascent arsenic 1 of the nation's apical nationalist probe universities," FIU President Kenneth A. Jessell said. "Like FIU, helium started retired precise 305 and became worldwide."

Pérez has been a longtime proponent of supporting acquisition successful South Florida. FIU said helium founded the archetypal SLAM! (Sports Leadership, Arts, and Management) tuition-free nationalist charter schoolhouse successful Miami successful 2012.

"This is astir uniting everybody," helium said. "This is astir bringing everybody together. ... Hard enactment is what pays off. They archer me, 'You truthful lucky.' Well, the harder I work, the luckier I get."