MLS Commissioner Don Garber to visit Nashville to study expansion bid

Joey Garrison | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption Sizing up Nashville with its MLS expansion competitors Will Major League Soccer award Nashville an expansion franchise? We will know sometime in the coming months. Let's compare Music City with the other 11 wannabe MLS cities.

Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber is set to visit Nashville next week to learn first-hand about Nashville's expansion team bid and to attend the Gold Cup match between the United States Men’s National Team and Panama at Nissan Stadium.

The visit, Garber's first to Nashville since it entered the MLS expansion sweepstakes, marks a key moment for Nashville's soccer boosters to showcase Music City as 11 other cities also vie for a team.

Garber will be in Nashville July 7 and July 8. His full itinerary isn't set, but he's expected to attend meetings related to Nashville's MLS bid before attending the Gold Cup game on Saturday at 3:30 p.m.

Nashville's soccer bid is led by prominent businessman John Ingram and Bill Hagerty (President Donald Trump's nominee as U.S. ambassador to Japan), who formed the Nashville MLS Steering Committee last summer to begin the push for a team.

“We are honored to host Commissioner Garber on his visit to Nashville," Will Alexander, another Nashville MLS Steering Committee co-founder, said in a statement. "The Gold Cup match on July 8 is an opportunity for Nashville to reinforce its case for a Major League Soccer expansion team by having a terrific turnout. We look forward to showing Commissioner Garber why Nashville is such a great sports town.”

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Garber has been making the rounds to other cities in contention for one of four open expansion spots, making recent stops over the past year to St. Louis and Cincinnati, among others. In Nashville, the city's soccer investors will presumably look to highlight the well-documented economic growth of the city.

Ingram, chairman of Ingram Industries, in May purchased the controlling ownership rights to Nashville Soccer Club, the city's United Soccer League expansion team that is set to begin play next year. If Nashville is picked as an MLS city, Nashville's USL club would likely become the MLS club.

MLS is expected to award the initial two expansion cities in December.

Nashville is still in the process of finalizing a stadium plan for a potential MLS team in Nashville — a crucial component for Nashville to land a team. Mayor Megan Barry's administration has said they hope to propose a financing plan for a stadium at the city-owned Fairgrounds Nashville this fall.

Ingram, Hagerty and Barry this spring visited the league office in New York to meet with MLS officials.

Some soccer observers believe that Nashville's MLS soccer bid got a boost this month by the outpouring of support the city displayed during the Nashville Predators NHL Stanley Cup Final run.

Strong attendance at next week's Gold Cup match would also improve Nashville's chances.

The largest soccer crowd in Tennessee history, 44,835, took place in July 2015 when the U.S. men's team defeated Guatemala at a friendly match at Nissan Stadium. Last October, a crowd 40,287 watched a Mexico-New Zealand match at Nissan Stadium.

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.