Nashville is not close to Atlanta, Cincinnati or St. Louis but TV rights could emerge as an issue.
The people behind the effort to bring Major League Baseball to Nashville have some significant hurdles in front of them. Nashville and Tennessee taxpayers may be tapped out in spending money for a baseball facility after spending hundreds of millions of dollars for a National Football League facility. Music City Baseball has pushed forward in an attempt to land an MLB expansion franchise and has a team name, Nashville Stars, and a logo. Another roadblock is the potential Major League Baseball owners’ lockout of the players in December. With stadium issues in Oakland and Tampa out of the way, it would seem that MLB could add two teams after the labor issues are resolved. But another hurdle has emerged. The Atlanta Braves franchise ownership claims the Nashville territory. Nashville is around 250 miles or a four-hour drive on a good day from Atlanta, so the markets don’t overlap like Baltimore and Washington or Los Angeles and Anaheim or shared as the case in New York and Chicago. New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington are in a 250-mile radius. Atlanta has no nearby MLB rival with Cincinnati being the closest city and that is about 360 miles away. The Braves business TV market includes Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and western North Carolina. The Cincinnati Reds franchise owners as well as the St. Louis Cardinals franchise owners also claim Tennessee as part of their TV market.
Asked if he liked the idea of an expansion team in Nashville for baseball, President and CEO of the Atlanta Braves franchise Derek Schiller had a one-word answer, ‘No,'” I love Nashville. Just as a reminder, Tennessee is part of our territory, right? We’re going to be protective of the territory what we have.'” It seems that a fight over territorial TV rights could be brewing if MLB does move ahead with expansion plans.
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