‘Think Paradise Park meets ESPN Zone’ — Titans President details new Nissan Stadium fan experience in exclusive interview

The Tennessee Titans are two seasons away from moving into their new $2 billion stadium, which is set to become one the world’s preeminent entertainment venues beginning in 2027. I sat down with the man behind Nashville’s next great stage, Titans President and CEO Burke Nihill, to discuss all the latest on the team’s new home.

The morning of our July 14th conversation, Nihill scheduled a tour for himself of the construction site. Turns out, even when you’re the leader of the project and working on-site many days, it’s easy to lose track of all the progress actually being made in the construction zone. He shared the latest on the timeline:

“It’s completely on track. It’s remarkable, the quality of work that the team has done. Our internal lead is a guy named Kellen DeCoursey, he’s the project executive. They laid out a completion date at the end of February 2027. And it’s just kind of been within that one week period the entire time. You know, rain storms, all kinds of reasons for delays right? And they’re just completely on track. They’re so good at what they do.”

If you drive by on the interstate, or just attend an event at Nissan Stadium, you can see the maximum height of the building has been reached on the west face. The circular shape of the ETFE roof is emerging from the steel lattice, and every concourse can now be walked. Full enclosure of the building is scheduled for Fall of 2026, and from there it will be a sprint to the finish line installing all of the interior fixtures.

It really is quite a marvel to see this mega-project maintain it’s schedule without any long term delays to speak of so far. I know that at least personally, whenever I hear something like has started construction, I just assume the final date will be delayed a couple months at the least. SoFi stadium in Los Angeles was delayed a full year before it finally opened in 2020. But so far for New Nissan Stadium, fingers crossed, they’re on schedule to open when they originally intended to.

“Maybe I should, but I literally do not lose a wink of sleep about the stadium construction process, because it’s just been in such good hands.”

I asked Nihill about his feelings on the team working to not “sell out” on the average fan. Whenever a shiny new building is unveiled and the sales process begins, most folks can’t help but cynically expect to be intentionally priced-out to make way for deeper corporate pockets. Nihill can’t say this, but I sure can: this is the way much of the professional sports landscape has been trending in the US for years now. NFL stadiums are increasingly cold, corporate atmospheres. And naturally, the average family of fans who just want to support their team… well, they hate it.

Keeping New Nissan Stadium Affordable For The Average Fan

A lot of the feedback I got early on from fans in reaction to the Titans sales process was disappointment along these lines. Folks were unhappy with the price increase they saw on paper. But I wanted to give the organization a chance to speak to this complaint, and here’s what Nihill had to say:

“There is something of a template for how you go about building a new building, selling a new building. And you know, one of the things I’ve loved about Amy (Adams Strunk’s) leadership is that she’s allowed us to just think differently and be different. And we’ve definitely taken that approach in terms of the building we’re going to build, the way we’re going to try to bring it to life, and the dream that we have for what this building will be. And that dream was never going to be filling it with 60,000 new people. The dream was always going to be that this is the next great chapter of the Tennessee Titans organization, and that means that we’ve got to try to bring as many people with us into that next generation as we can.”

Bringing fans along with the team into the new building was a recurring theme of the conversation. It’s clear Titans brass have made this a top-line priority for them through this process. Whether you think the pricing reflects it or not, the desire to keep as many loyal fans in the stands was unquestionable.

“As we sit here today, that number has worked out to about $60 million in PSL credits that we’ve just given to existing PSL members as an incentive and an invitation to come with us into the next generation. That wildly exceeds what our projections were, but we’re happy about that.”

Nihill said the Titans went against a good bit of the advice given to them by consultants in the spirit of doing what’s best for the average fan. That included the decision to even offer PSL credits in the first place.

“To give you some very specific data points on dispelling the idea that this building is not for our core fan: even once we decided to kind of bring pricing to what was something that felt right to us, which meant PSL’s as low as $750–which was not something that our consultants were recommending–they still expected that based on past stadium work they’ve done, maybe 40-to-50% of current season ticket members would come over to the current building.

A year into PSL sales, we’re pacing at 70%.

So 70% of our season ticket members have actually purchased PSLs in the new building. And we, I mean, to tell you we agonized about how to honor season ticket members is an understatement. Because we just never felt like we turned a corner until basically the very end.”

70% retention is a much better number than I was expecting to hear. It’s a figure that, unsurprisingly, the team is very proud of:

“And I gotta tell you, I’m just smitten with how it’s playing out. I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the months leading up to PSL sales. But as people have actually been able to get their questions answered, especially when they actually get an opportunity to come to Titans House, which has been a feat trying to get so many people coming through what is a pretty small space, those questions go away.”

Titans House is the temporary face of New Nissan Stadium, functioning as an experiential storefront for prospective buyers. It’s where PSL holders have visited with Ticket Office staff to see and discuss options for getting seats in the new building.

“There’s reasons why folks aren’t coming over, but I have had very few that, once they’ve actually learned about the reality–not what they expected based on some of these other buildings, but when they’ve learned about the reality–I’ve had very few fans who have expressed disappointment with the pricing. And we’re so darn proud of this building, where we haven’t thrown away any decision. Everything has just gotten this incredible level of care. And so when we’ve said there’s not a bad seat in the house, we really mean it. Part of the decision for a 60,000 seat capacity was saying, we’re not just going to keep building to build more nosebleed seats.”

Nosebleed seats: not a particularly endearing term for where you pay to sit and enjoy a show. But true nosebleed offerings were a staple of an era of stadium architecture gone by. It’s prevalence in the 90s is reflected in the current seating situation in the Titans stadium, with (in my opinion) very little of the upper deck serving as an acceptable entertainment experience on gameday.

Revolutionizing The Titans Gameday Experience

The plain honest truth about Nissan Stadium as it currently exists is that it’s clearly built to cram as many seats in the building as possible. The stands blossom up and out, away from the field in an inefficient way. It’s crammed. You cannot say with a straight face that every seat in Nissan Stadium is a decent view, not even close.

In New Nissan Stadium, however, the Titans are more than happy to say it with a straight face: every seat will provide a quality entertainment experience. Burke Nihill sees this as a major point of pride for this building, and has already put his money where his mouth is:

“And so, just as an example, I have sight lines on the entire building. This is a 30 year deal. I don’t necessarily expect to be working for the team 30 years from now, and I’ve got a family who are diehard Titans fans, so I bought PSLs.

I bought PSLs on our terrace level. I have a vision of the entire building, and that’s where I know my family, who are diehard Titans fans, will have an experience that they’re going to love for generations.”

If the President and CEO is setting his family up in the upper deck, I’m willing to bet “nosebleeds” won’t be an accurate description of the experience up there.

The Terrace Level is what that new upper deck will be called, named for the 90,000 square feet of outdoor terrace space wrapping around the building high above the streets below. It’s going to function as the upper concourse, and according to Nihill, it is going to be spectacular.

“We have nothing to announce quite yet, but we’re working to partner with some pretty crazy groups to make it special. Think Paradise Park meets ESPN Zone, to build the coolest sports bar right on a rooftop that you can imagine. It’s not a giant walkway, no, it’s going to be spectacular. And that is basically the concourse for the upper upper level.”

This is perhaps the most underrated upgrade of them all. The upper deck concourse in Nissan Stadium is plain bad. It’s a cramped, aging cave of concrete without enough amenities to efficiently serve all the guests sitting up there. Everything there is to dislike about the current situation is going to be remedied and then some in New Nissan Stadium.

“The seats are 38% closer to the field than the current stadium, and there are twice as many bathrooms up there. It’ll be twice as easy to go get food and beverage because of the frictionless markets, and that terrace is right outside. So I think once people actually start to experience it, these myths of “they’re pricing us out, they don’t care about us, the team is moving on.” No, the team is moving forward. The team is taking a step into where we think this team belongs, relative to the National Football League and what our fans deserve. But we are making every possible effort to bring our existing fans with us on that journey, and it’s just been really gratifying that so many of them have done that.”

The tremendous investment in video boards will shine wherever you are in the building, but nobody will have a better view of them than those on the Terrace Level.

“The LED experience is going to really bring everything to life, and in some ways, maybe be a little bit more powerful in that terrace level. There’s 75,000 square feet of LED, which to give you a sense, is coming up on a couple acres worth of screen. About 40,000 of it is this “Ring of Fire”.

Another money-saving problem that spawned a creative solution was figuring out where exactly to put all these massive screens. A center-hung design would’ve probably run up something in the neighborhood of a $30 million tab. So the creative director thought outside the box, and found a way to have immersive video secured to walls and roof edges. They did something original that they think will probably be cooler anyways, and saved that money in the process.

“Part of honoring our current fans, part of being able to hold pricing to what feels fair and reasonable, starts with actually building a building that doesn’t get out of control. It’s a big part of what Kellen has done for us, is helping us build something I think is gonna be an iconic, one-of-one, world famous building. But also, there’s some crazy smart decisions that were made throughout this thing that ultimately helped to keep the price lower. For example, with the LED screen, you think about SoFi Stadium which has a center-hung one that’s a big loop. AT&T Stadium has a really big center-hung board too. Those roofs have to be so strong because you’re effectively holding up a Boeing 747 from the middle of them.”

God-willing, fingers crossed, Nihill and his team will be able to open the doors to this incredible space in 2027 as planned. 16 months into the project, so far, so great.

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