It’s official: Major League Soccer is coming to Nashville, Tennessee.
MLS held a banner event Wednesday afternoon at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame, formally awarding the city an expansion team that could join the league as early as 2019.
Nashville was one of 12 cities to submit formal bids in January to be awarded one of four available MLS expansion slots. The MLS club has plans to play in a new, 27,500-seat soccer stadium at the Fairgrounds Nashville.
The new MLS team will be owned by Nashville Soccer Holdings, LLC, led by John R. Ingram, the chairman of Ingram Industries Inc. In May, Ingram became the majority owner of Nashville SC, which will begin play in the United Soccer League in 2018.
Nashville will be the third club from the Southeast to join MLS in recent years, alongside Orlando City SC (2015) and Atlanta United FC (2017). In July, the city drew more than 47,000 fans for a CONCACAF Gold Cup match between the United States and Panama. Later that month, a crowd of 56,232 attended a friendly match between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur. U.S. MNT matches in 2015 and 2016 — against Guatemala and Mexico, respectively — attracted crowds above 40,000.
MLS is expected to award another expansion team in the near future. The three finalists in contention are Cincinnati, Detroit and Sacramento.
