Nashville’s staggering growth is catching the attention of baseball’s highest league.
According to Ball Park Digest, Nashville-based businessman John Loar is leading the way to bring an MLB franchise to the heart of Tennessee, which has been in recent expansion discussions.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been entertaining the idea of adding more teams to the MLB’s 30-team roster. Manfred has acknowledged Nashville on the short-list of cities that could potentially receive MLB franchises, said the Nashville Post.
“We have a real list of cities that I think are not only interested in having baseball, but are viable in terms of baseball,” Manfred said. “Places like Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, Nashville in the United States, certainly Montreal, maybe Vancouver, in Canada.”
Loar created the Music City Equity Group for the purpose of analyzing the potential baseball market in Nashville, a city which is already home to a minor league team, the Nashville Sounds.
“I just wanted to spend time furthering my research on the Nashville market,” Loar said. “It’s really just on my own dime. Nobody’s paying me to do this.”
The current ballpark that hosts the Sounds has already been deemed unfit for an MLB team. According to Nashville Business Journal, there are questions about who will pay for the stadium and where it will be built, since Nashville already hosts the National Football League’s Tennessee Titans, the National Hockey League’s Nashville Predators, and a forthcoming Major League Soccer team in the near future.
In the meantime, Nashville sports fans can still tune in to the Titans, Predators, Sounds and soon MLS games while MLB expansion talks resume.
