Yahoo Sports Super Bowls, College Football Playoff and Final Fours? Nashville dreams big after Titans stadium vote
The Super Bowl. The Final Four. The College Football Playoff. WWE WrestleMania.
Nashville's council voted 26-12 early Wednesday morning to approve the Tennessee Titans' $2.1 billion new stadium. The vote puts in motion the process of moving the Titans out of Nissan Stadium and into the enclosed facility by 2027. But it also puts Nashville one step closer to hosting some of the nation's marquee sporting events that have eluded the city for so long.
"Why shouldn’t Nashville chase whatever Nashville would like to chase?" Butch Spyridon, CEO of Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp, told The Tennessean, which is part of the USA TODAY Network. "For me, it starts with the Super Bowl. Without question. We have that shot. We have everything in place. We have the popularity. We have the convenient package of hotels, restaurants, entertainment, you name it, all within walking distance. We have the experience where we can show how we delivered. The only thing we’re missing was the facility."
Spyridon said Nashville's past attempts to host Super Bowls and Final Fours were usually rebuffed because Nissan Stadium isn't domed. That won't be an issue anymore.
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How does Nashville land Super Bowl?
The process of bringing the Super Bowl to Nashville is a lot more complicated than building a shiny, new facility, though. As Matt Shapiro, NFL vice president of events strategy and integration, explained to The Tennessean, the process of bidding for and ultimately being awarded a Super Bowl is multifold.
Franchises, usually in the summer, express interest in which events they'd like to host, ranging from the Super Bowl to the Pro Bowl. The league works with its internal Major Events Advisory Committee to identify one city to enter into an exclusive negotiating window and provides specifications to that city. The league, the team and the city's convention and visitors council work together to craft a bid, which is submitted, analyzed, recommended to the Major Events Advisory Committee for approval and then recommended to a full membership vote. The entire process has ranged from five to eight months in recent years.
The Super Bowl will be in Las Vegas in 2024 and New Orleans in 2025. Beyond that, no future games have been awarded.
Obviously Nashville hasn't yet submitted a bid for a future Super Bowl. Shapiro said he's in constant communication with all 32 teams about events they'd like to host and he says Nashville has a proven track record of successfully hosting NFL events after the overwhelmingly positive experience of the 2019 NFL Draft.
"I think one of the things was we really try to ensure the event takes on the personality of the city," Shapiro said. "When you look at the 2019 draft in Nashville, it perfectly married together what the draft is and this celebration of hope for all 32 clubs with what Nashville is as this growing, exciting city. Being right on lower Broadway we were able to blend music and entertainment with football with the backdrop of Nissan Stadium. I think it was this perfect symphony at the right time that was mutually beneficial for both sides."
Shapiro added the NFL does not have a hard and fast rule about minimum stadium capacities required to host major events. As proposed, the Titans' new stadium will seat 60,000 fans, making it the smallest in the NFL.
Super Bowl criteria includes hotels, entertainment
A snazzy stadium isn't the NFL's only consideration for hosting a Super Bowl, though. The league will need to feel comfortable with the city's hotels, entertainment venues, parking setups, team practice facilities and community impact groups.
Spyridon said he's not concerned about any of that.
"(NFL commissioner Roger) Goodell, he honed in on our hotel package when he was here last fall," Spyridon said. "He wanted to be sure. He wasn’t committing to bringing a Super Bowl here, but he was trying to get his arms around what he knew he needed. By the time he left he understood that not only did we have enough hotel rooms for the fans, but the high-end package for groups from media to sponsors to owners. He left with an understanding that we could do that. He made the comment, we were at an event at Fifth + Broad, and he said he’d never seen Broadway from that angle. He’d seen it from the other end for the draft. He was more impressed about how everything had filled in, the hotels he could see, the overall entertainment footprint."
Can Titans' new stadium host Final Fours, College Football Playoff, more?
To Spyridon, the goal isn't to host one spectacular event. It's to get Nashville in the rotation of the nation's most popular event destinations.
He said there's an agreement in place to host WWE WrestleMania contingent upon the new stadium being approved. He's been in conversations with everything from the Southeastern Conference to the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction about potentially bringing marquee events to the city. He said he had a conversation earlier this month with Byron Hatch, the COO of the College Football Playoff, about trying to bring a championship game to town.
Spyridon said the CFP would require immediately booking 6,000 hotel rooms. That doesn't count the 40,000 or more fans who would travel to Nashville to attend the game or the countless others in town to tailgate or see the pre- and post-game events.
"That is money for this city," Spyridon said. "That is sales tax revenue. It’s property tax revenue because the value of our hotels goes up when this business level goes up. That’s money the city and the state make. At the end of the day, that’s why we do what we do."
What's next as Nashville chases Super Bowl?
The jump from approving a stadium proposal to hosting a Super Bowl won't be instantaneous. As Shapiro points out, the NFL usually likes to see a new stadium in operation for a couple years before awarding it a Super Bowl. But of the seven stadiums opened since 2009, every one has hosted a Super Bowl or will have hosted a Super Bowl within five years of hosting their first game.
In Spyridon's mind, Nashville is where it needs to be. Getting these events aren't favors. They're rewards for a city that's grown to deserve them.
"We don’t need to grow to do these things we’re talking about," Spyridon said. "We’re at a great place today. And that’s a great position to be in as well. This isn’t about growth for growth’s sake. We have the experience, the track record, we have the amenities. We had this one missing piece to take care of."
Contact Nick Suss at nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on Twitter @nicksuss.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Titans stadium vote has Nashville dreaming of Super Bowls, Final Fours
