The Tennessee Titans are Nashville’s NFL franchise, playing their home games at Nissan Stadium on the East Bank of the Cumberland River since 1999. They’re the only NFL team in Tennessee and operate in a city that, depending on who you ask, has never fully made them the center of its sports identity, a status they’re betting a $2.2 billion new stadium will change.
The Franchise Background
The Titans relocated from Houston, where they were the Oilers, to Nashville in 1997, playing at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis and Vanderbilt Stadium while the new riverfront stadium was built. The franchise reached the Super Bowl in the 1999 season, losing to the St. Louis Rams 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV, a game decided by one of the most famous plays in NFL history, the “Music City Miracle” had come earlier in the playoffs, a lateral return by Lorenzo Neal and Kevin Dyson in an AFC Wild Card game against the Bills. Dyson is also responsible for the infamous “one yard short” moment in the Super Bowl itself, tackled at the one-yard line as time expired.
The 2000s saw cycles of playoff appearances and rebuilds. The 2008 team started 10-0 before collapsing in the playoffs. Most recently, the franchise has been in extended rebuilding mode, cycling through head coaches and quarterbacks with minimal postseason success.
Current Stadium Situation
The current Nissan Stadium, an open-air concrete-and-steel structure, opened in 1999 with 69,124 seats. By the mid-2010s it had aged noticeably and the city debated its future.
The new enclosed Nissan Stadium is under construction next to the current building and scheduled to open for the 2027 NFL season. The project carries a projected cost of $2.2 billion, with $1.26 billion of public funding, the largest stadium subsidy in U.S. history at the time of approval. The new building seats approximately 60,000 and features a translucent roof similar to SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. By design, every seat is approximately 38% closer to the field than in the current stadium. The roof installation was targeted for completion by October 2026, with the building set to fully open in 2027.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell attended the stadium’s topping-out ceremony in November 2025 and hinted strongly that Nashville is now on track to eventually host a Super Bowl once the new venue opens.
Getting Tickets
Tickets to Titans games are available through the Titans’ official website (tennesseetitans.com) and Ticketmaster. Single-game tickets range from around $60 for upper-deck seats to $300+ for premium lower-level sections. The Titans don’t typically sell out games the way Nashville Predators do, making walk-up and day-of tickets more accessible than for hockey.
Parking at Nissan Stadium is limited. Ride-share drop-off is common, and the walk from downtown Broadway to the stadium is manageable, about 1.5 miles across the Pedestrian Bridge over the Cumberland River.
The Fan Experience
A game-day walk across the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge with the Nashville skyline behind you is one of the more visually satisfying sporting commutes in the NFL. The stadium itself, the current one, is ordinary by modern standards, which is part of why the $2.2 billion replacement exists.
Tailgating on the East Bank draws a mix of serious fans and people extending a Broadway crawl. Titans games run roughly 3.5 hours, and the crowd skews toward families and out-of-towners more than the devoted home crowd you’d find at Bridgestone Arena for a Predators game.
The new stadium windows, once the old structure is demolished, will give seated fans views across the Cumberland River directly toward Lower Broad’s honky-tonk district, a view you won’t find in any other NFL building.
Sources:
- New Nissan Stadium Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewNissanStadium
- ESPN, “Construction on new enclosed Titans stadium hits halfway point”: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46208901/titans-reach-halfway-point-construction-new-enclosed-stadium
- Tennessee Titans Official Stadium Site: https://newnissanstadium.com/
- Titans News, “Topping Out Ceremony”: https://www.tennesseetitans.com/news/topping-out-ceremony-for-new-nissan-stadium-provides-optimism-for-the-future-of-the-titans-and-a-super-bowl-in-nashville
- Engineering News-Record: https://www.enr.com/articles/60823-nfls-tennessee-titans-changing-the-game-with-22b-nissan-stadium