Nashville Juggles A Cornucopia Of Sports With Its Star on the Rise

Nashville Juggles A Cornucopia Of Sports With Its Star on the Rise NFL, NHL, MLS, MLB AAA, NASCAR want a place in Music City By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Monday, April 21, 2025 - 10:20 am

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Major-league sports franchises live to expand, but, as comedian Steven Wright once observed, You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

That's a problem Nashville has been experiencing, as the rapidly growing city seeks civic and cultural validation in hosting teams and leagues, buttressed by the entertainment-fueled town's already substantial broadcast and media infrastructure.

Ever since the NFL's Houston Oilers moved to Music City and Nissan Stadium (formerly Adelphia Coliseum 1999-2002 and LP Field until 2015) in 1997 and became the Tennessee Titans, the city has been racking up leagues and teams and venues. The NHL Predators arrived a year later, and MSL's Nashville SC began play in 2018 at the new Geodis Park. In the city's robust second tier are MLB's Triple-A Nashville Sounds, whose First Horizon Park opened in 2015, and the Music Women's Blue Chip Basketball League's City Icons, who play their games at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium.

That's all on top of the NCAA and other collegiate teams fielded and hosted locally by Lipscomb University, Belmont University, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University, and Fisk University, each with its own stadium or arena.

The city has been in the hunt for future MLB and NBA expansion teams. An ownership group called Music City Baseball is working to bring an MLB expansion franchise to Nashville, having already named its aspiration: the Music City Stars. A group of investors including Peyton Manning and music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill and led by Nashville Predators Chairman and former Governor Bill Haslam has submitted a bid for a WNBA expansion team to be called the Tennessee Summitt.

Nashville Predators/Bridgestone Arena's Jacob Lutz: If you're going to be able to support shows and crowds like [the NFL Draft], you need a huge infrastructure. Nashville has it, and it's only getting bigger.

The city's entertainment-industry parity with New York and Los Angeles extends to sports, according to Jacob Lutz, director, technical operations, Nashville Predators/Bridgestone Arena. The Preds, the Titans, the NFL Draft, the CMAs, the biggest July 4th broadcast in the country: if you're going to be able to support shows and crowds like that, you need a huge infrastructure, he says. Nashville has it, and it's only getting bigger.

Where to put all this sport in a city that's constantly growing - 86 people a day move there, enough to fill the Miami Marlins' new Load Depot Park or Cleveland Guardians' Progressive Field each year - is a question it continues to address. Nashville and its suburbs surged past 2 million people during the pandemic; new data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that trend continuing. The Titans' new $2.2 billion home is being built on the site of the old one's adjacent parking lot - the same way space-challenged New York made new venues for the Yankees and Mets.

A Long Day at the Races But it might be even more challenging to relocate a motorsports track, a problem the city has been trying to figure out since the Titans were still wearing 10-gallon helmets in Texas. The city-owned Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway has not hosted top NASCAR races since 1984, and Nashville leaders have long been at odds over what to do with it, a debate that has spanned five mayors and a Metro charter amendment. Now it's first-term Mayor Freddie O'Connell's turn to wrestle with it.

Track opponents are pushing for a ban on racing, sparking a political fight pitting neighborhood leaders, affordable-housing advocates, and soccer-team owners (the track and Nashville SC's Geodis Park stadium are virtually adjacent) against pro-racing supporters and state officials, who in recent years have been legislatively chipping away at the city's political autonomy. O'Connell remains undecided, balancing his past support for the racetrack with concerns about quality-of-life issues for nearby residents.

The dispute will continue for another year, since a recent local law governing charter amendments means that the soonest a new measure could be on the ballot is August 2026.

MLS Nashville SC owner John Ingram opposes racetrack revitalization and has paused a financial commitment to an affordable-housing initiative while awaiting the outcome. Although the racetrack has not hosted top NASCAR events since 1984, second-tier races have been held there.

Speedway Motorsports, which owns Bristol Motor Speedway, host to several key NASCAR races, had a public/private partnership to finance a renovation plan that would see top NASCAR races return to Nashville's fairgrounds. That concept never advanced, as mayors like O'Connell focused on quality-of-life issues while racing opponents, led by Nashville SC's Ingram, who reiterated his opposition to a racetrack-revitalization plan and has voiced concern that a renovated racetrack would compete with Geodis Park - each venue seats approximately 30,000 - for concerts and other events. He has also echoed, somewhat disingenuously, community concerns about noise.

(If Nashville wins an NWSL nod, the team intends to play at Geodis Park, the Nashville Business Journal reports. That venue is also scheduled to host three games of the FIFA World Cup this year.)

On the other hand, Speedway Motorsports has promised to include noise-blocking technology, limit the racetrack's use for practice runs, and provide neighbors a list of dates when races will be booked.

Racing enthusiasts view the 121-year-old track, where legends like Dale Earnhardt got the

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