The history of professional women’s sports in Nashville can charitably be described as inconsistent. The city has been home to a smattering of minor-league-level franchises across a number of sports, particularly basketball and soccer. There’s also been a handful of teams competing at the highest level of their respective sports, but in leagues that are not necessarily on the level of the historically top-flight WNBA or NWSL — like the Nashville Dream of the now-defunct Music City-headquartered National Women’s Football Association.
On one brief occasion, the city was home to what could be considered a true top-flight women’s professional sports team — in 1998, when the short-lived Nashville Noise competed in the ultimately doomed WNBA rival American Basketball League. Nashville had a similar — albeit longer and more robust — relationship with men’s sports prior to the arrival of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and the NHL’s Nashville Predators in the late ’90s. In the years since, the city has added MLS squad Nashville SC.
But despite being an engaged sports town that has hosted hugely successful events like the 2019 NFL Draft, several major NHL affairs and the 2014 NCAA Women’s Final Four, not to mention the 2017 Stanley Cup Finals, the city has yet to land a WNBA or NWSL franchise.
“Sports play a big role [in a city like Nashville],” says local attorney Margaret Behm. “It’s huge entertainment, and it brings people together. You can really relate to people, and I think it’s a big economic driver of the city.”
Margaret Behm
Behm is a longtime board and executive committee member of the Nashville Sports Council and the founder and first chair of the council’s Women in Sports Committee. Currently, she’s serving her second term as a board member of the Metropolitan Sports Authority, which oversees the city’s professional sports facilities, and is also the chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for the Women’s Professional Sports Initiative.
The local market is crowded with three men’s professional franchises, a Triple-A baseball team in the Nashville Sounds, five Division I college athletics programs in the area, the constant noise of a potential MLB team coming to town, and countless other sporting and non-sporting events happening daily. But if the city truly wants to present itself as one of the country’s premier sports-entertainment destinations, Behm thinks a WNBA or NWSL franchise should be next on the bucket list.
“We are such a sports city that it’s important to have a women’s team too,” Behm says. “There aren’t a lot of teams out there, so it’s very important, I think, for cities like Nashville, who are so excited and support women’s sports, to be intentional about trying to get a team or teams here. But the owners of those leagues and the leagues themselves have to be in a position to want to expand too.”
The interest is there. When sports management consulting firm CAA ICON presented the findings of its Women’s Sports Initiative Strategic Assessment to the Ad Hoc Committee, the poll indicated that 80 percent of the nearly 4,400 participants supported a women’s professional sports team.
During a post-game press conference after the 2023 SheBelieves Cup — the first-ever international soccer match hosted at NSC’s Geodis Park — U.S. Women’s National Team manager Vlatko Andonovski said, unprompted, that Nashville should be home to the NWSL’s next expansion franchise. Stars Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan shared the sentiment. It’s an idea that has been bandied about everywhere from local supporters groups to sources within the NWSL league offices.
“I go to the NSC games and I see all these supporters, and I’m thinking women’s sports can capture that audience,” says Chrissy Webb, organizer of local group Bring NWSL to Nashville. Webb says access and marketing are two of the biggest hurdles when it comes to growing local women’s sports fandom.
“If you don’t know something exists, then how can we support it?” says Webb. “That’s one of the main reasons why we started this little grassroots group. We just don’t have that access because we are still overcoming that idea that no one watches women’s sports. It seems like there really is a bedrock here that could be built on, and it just hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know why exactly that is, but hopefully that will happen one day.”
The city as a whole is largely mixed when it comes to the idea of professional basketball, but the college and high school scenes thrive here. College basketball and college sports in general have an especially strong foothold thanks to the many programs in the Middle Tennessee area and the SEC’s commitment to making Nashville its quasi-cultural center. Plus, a huge contingent of University of Tennessee fans, many of whom grew up watching coach Pat Summitt’s Lady Vols dynasty, live in the area. The foundation seems to be in place for a WNBA franchise to thrive, and the league has noticed.
“The league obviously wants the teams to be able to play in a particular city, but the ownership group is also very important,” Behm says. “What we looked at is what would make Nashville more attractive to a potential ownership group. We have the market, but one thing our consultants told us is that if you have a training facility, that’s attractive.
“The Metropolitan Council, in the last capital operating budget, provided funds that were available for a training facility for both a WNBA team and an NWSL team for $30 million each,” she continues. “So it’s sitting there in the event we find an option. The mayor has to put it in the budget and the council has to approve it, but that’s there to hopefully help Nashville have a leg up on a bid.”
There are several external factors beyond simply having the desire for a local women’s professional sports team, but Behm remains optimistic.
“There are folks who are interested in owning both WNBA and NWSL teams in Nashville,” she says. “I am really encouraged about us getting at least one of these teams relatively soon. There have been some encouraging meetings, and there are some folks who are willing to put up the kind of money that it’s going to take to be able to land a spot in one of these leagues.”
