Bristol Motor Speedway, one of NASCAR’s most iconic tracks, will host a regular season MLB game between the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds in 2025, multiple sources told The Athletic on Tuesday.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith, whose family has long owned and operated Bristol, are set to make an announcement at the track in Tennessee on Friday.
Bristol hosts two wildly popular NASCAR race weekends annually at its half-mile oval that has a seating capacity approaching 150,000. The track hosting a MLB game is not the first time Bristol will have hosted a high-profile event outside of motorsports, with Tennessee and Virginia Tech playing a college football game in 2016 on a purpose-built field in the infield. That game drew 156,990, the largest crowd ever to watch an NCAA football game.
Meanwhile, MLB adds another venue to its growing lineup of special events. In recent years, the league has played regular season games in London, Mexico City, Tokyo and Seoul, in addition to Iowa for the Field of Dreams game, historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala. and Williamsport, Pa., site of the Little League World Series.
MLB seems to have found an equally ambitious partner in Smith, whose company portfolio includes 10 tracks that host a combined 14 NASCAR Cup Series races. He is known within motorsports for grandiose ideas that fall outside conventional norms.
In addition to building a football field inside Bristol to host the Volunteers and Hokies, Smith also brought dirt in to completely cover Bristol’s concrete racing surface in 2021 so that his track could host NASCAR’s first premier series race on dirt since 1970. That experiment ended after three years. He also to great expense built a road course inside Charlotte Motor Speedway in 2018, his flagship facility. The venue currently hosts NASCAR’s longest race, the Coca-Cola 600, on its 1.5-mile oval each Memorial Day weekend, then a playoff race on its 17-turn road course each fall.
This story will be updated.
(Photo of Bristol Motor Speedway: Meg Oliphant / Getty Images)
