Watch Out Las Vegas, Nashville Is After You With A New NFL Stadium
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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher/Writer
Las Vegas competes against other cities like Orlando and Los Angeles for tourism dollars.
Bu a city that has some similarities to Las Vegas made a bold move recently to build a subsidized domed NFL stadium to not only provide a venue for big league football but also lure entertainment programming that may have bypassed its market before.
Watch out Las Vegas, here comes Nashville with a domed stadium with an interior that looks a lot like the inside of Allegiant Stadium.
The Tennessee Titans this week unveiled renderings of a new proposed indoor stadium that was designed by the same architectural firm that designed Allegiant Stadium — Kansas City-based Manica. Here’s the proposed Titans stadium:
Here’s Allegiant Stadium:
Las Vegas and Nashville both rely on tourism and entertainment economies and both markets have an NFL team and an NHL franchise. The Raiders just played the Titans in Nashville a month ago, losing 24-22.
Some people here in Las Vegas commented that even the football stadium interiors of the proposed Titans stadium and the Raiders stadium are very similar too:
The Titans stadium project is $2.1 billion, while the Raiders stadium is slightly less than $2 billion. In Southern Nevada, a hotel room tax is generating revenues to pay off the public debt on a $750 million contribution to help build the Raiders stadium.
In Tennessee, the Titans stadium financing deal also includes a hotel room tax component — a new one percent countywide hotel occupancy tax. But wait, there’s more in stadium public subsidies in Nashville.
The stadium funding proposal calls for the state of Tennessee to contribute $500 million in bonds, with Nashville’s metro sports authority agency adding $760 million from sales tax revenues and that one percent hotel room tax. The NFL and the Titans would contribute $840 million toward building the 60,000-seat stadium.
The Titans use 69,000-seat Nissan Stadium, but it’s an open-air venue. The Las Vegas market has been able to attract music and entertainment acts thanks to its palatial indoor stadium managed by the Raiders and their venue management vendor.
Plus, the NFL awarded Super Bowl 58 to Las Vegas for the league’s premier event at Allegiant Stadium in Feb. 2024. If Nashville builds the Titans stadium, expect the NFL to give a Super Bowl to that market, too.
