Been to Nissan Stadium lately?

Statistically, you’re less likely to answer yes than in years past. The NFL’s attendance statistics for the 2025 regular season are out, and the Titans did about as well as you’d expect them to have done: very, very poorly. In fact, they did so poorly that (and this sounds crazy) they kind of singlehandedly turned the leaguewide attendance trendline downwards for the first time in years.

3 reasons Titans attendance was terrible in 2025

The Sports Business Journal reported this week that NFL attendance figures dipped slightly in 2025, marking the first downturn since the pandemic. The average crowd was 69,055 this year, down from 69,555 in 2024, the record high in at least the past two decades.

Now you may be quick to point to the perceived shift away from average fans and towards corporate audiences in person—as well as the appeal of the television product from home—as the reasons gameday attendance dropped. But in reality, until this season, the NFL had rebounded with in-stadium performance to better than levels before the pandemic in recent years. This year’s dip remains the fifth-highest average since 2004 and well above pre-2020 numbers.

So why the random drop? Well, the Titans played a serious role in it! Their average attendance of 58,593 was 31st in the league, ahead of only the Bears, who play in Soldier Field with the smallest official capacity in the NFL (61,500). Nissan Stadium’s capacity is 69,143, around league-average.

The percentage of available tickets sold to fans dropped from 98.3% to 97.6% this year. Twelve teams sold 100% of their inventory, but three fell below 93%: the Jaguars (91%), the Jets (90.8%), and the Titans (85.2%). Tennessee’s year-over-year drop in attendance was by far the largest at 9.1%. Why was it so terrible in Nashville this year? Three big reasons:

1. Tennessee’s terrible on-field performance

I don’t have to tell you that the team stunk. I mean, guys, it was really bad. That, of course, was a big driving factor. And it wasn’t just that people stopped showing up when the record got ugly. This was a team billed by the coaches and executives themselves as very conservative.

They weren’t expected to be any good. And they had a head coach whom many fans had already soured on. Besides the allure of Cam Ward, there just wasn’t much to literally get up out of bed on Sunday mornings.

I myself only stayed for a handful of these games because I’m sick in the head (and being paid to stay). But when you’re the one paying to be there, this just wasn’t a rewarding product at all.

2. Titans lack a good gameday experience

Perhaps here’s a hot take, speaking of rewarding products: the quality of the gameday experience itself was just as much of an issue for attendance as the football team was.

At the top of this article, when I asked if you’d been to Nissan Stadium lately, those of you who answered yes probably did so with a gross taste in your mouth. The current Nissan Stadium is a total dump. And the gameday atmosphere put on by the team — from infrastructure, to concessions, to tailgating, to in-game entertainment — is pitiful. But frankly, that’s kind of by design.

All of the team’s energy and innovation is being poured into New Nissan Stadium. Speaking of the New Nissan Stadium, that played a role in this, too. That area is an active construction zone, so traffic and parking are rough right now.

3. Titans had some bad luck with home games

Finally, the Titans got pretty unlucky with their home games. Everybody knows that the insult to injury on all these deflated attendance numbers in 2025 for the Titans is being helped significantly by opposing fans.

Nashville is a huge destination city on the NFL calendar, and the home team being terrible lately makes tickets cheap. But when you run down their list of home opponents, there weren’t many big draws. Their divisional opponents aren’t often huge crowds, least of which is the Jaguars.

The Colts game was in Week 3 when fans didn’t yet realize how electric that team was (well, until they weren’t), and the Texans played here with a backup QB. Tennessee hosted both LA teams this year, but frankly, nobody cares about them out here (or in LA).

The Seahawks are far away, and the lousy Saints didn’t have a big following. The one game sold at “premium” rates by the team this year was the Chiefs, whose whole world had come crashing down the week prior. The one decent draw, and probably the best attended game all year, was the Patriots.

Here’s the good news: the Titans’ attendance future is bright. By all accounts, they’re ahead of schedule on ticket sales for the new stadium set to open in 2027, and if you ask me, the team will be (at least slightly) more fun to watch by then.

So keep that chin up, Titans fans. Things will be ok again one day. But for now, things are rough at Nissan Stadium in more ways than one.

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