MLB will play its first game at a NASCAR track with the goal of shattering attendance records

MLB will play its first game at a NASCAR track with the goal of shattering attendance records
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Fans of baseball, fire up your engines.

Major League Baseball made the announcement on Friday that one MLB regular-season game will be played at Bristol Motor Speedway, home of NASCAR, for the first time in 2019.

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August 2, 2025, is when the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds will play. It will be Tennessee’s first MLB in-season game as well.

“Over the course of the weekend, we hope to celebrate our game with a diverse range of supporters, both on and off the field, and to showcase the rich sports, music, and community traditions found in Tennessee and the surrounding areas,” Rob Manfred, the commissioner of the MLB stated.

With around 150,000 seats, Bristol Motor Speedway is one of the biggest sports stadiums in the United States.

The Major League Baseball single-game attendance record is probably going to be broken by the game in August of next year. A record-breaking 115,300 people attended an exhibition game between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2008 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, setting a Guinness World Record for the highest attendance at a baseball game ever. By contrast, an MLB ballpark typically has 40,000–45,000 seats available.

This news coincides with Major League Baseball’s continued efforts to bring the game to new audiences and venues both domestically and abroad. The Major League Baseball (MLB) has played on a number of unconventional ballparks. Two examples include the 2016 game that took place on an operational military base in Fort Bragg, North Carolina and the 2021 game that saw the Chicago White Sox take on the New York Yankees on the legendary “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville, Iowa. In June, just two days following Hall of Famer Willie Mays’ passing, the league held “MLB at Rickwood Field: A Tribute to the Negro Leagues” in Birmingham, Alabama.

The MLB has also released a calendar of ambitious overseas games that will take place in 2025, with stops in places like Tokyo, Mexico City, Paris, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Meanwhile, high-profile non-NASCAR events are nothing new to Bristol Motor Speedway. In 1961, an NFL exhibition game was held at the track. A purpose-built field in the infield hosted Tennessee and Virginia Tech in the 2016 “Battle at Bristol,” which drew 156,990 spectators—the highest attendance for an NCAA football game ever.

The Athletic, the first outlet to break this story on Tuesday, quoted Atlanta Braves third baseman Austin Riley as saying, “Teams traveling (abroad) and changing things up a bit is what you see.” It’ll be quite neat and different, in my opinion. It will be enjoyable.

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