In almost a year from now, Bristol Motor Speedway will be home to an iconic event. The racetrack, lovingly known as “Thunder Valley,” has made headlines as the venue is finally chosen for the first-ever Major League Baseball game in the state of Tennessee, scheduled between the Cincinnati Reds and the Atlanta Braves on August 2nd, 2025.

Like Ross Chastain said during the official announcements at Bristol, “I think it’s unmeasurable what it could do for both sports…” Indeed, for both sports eyeing a wider market base, this event christened the ‘Speedway Classic ’25’ could act as a healthy confluence for newer fans in 2024. After all, given the global reach of sports today, it’s quite unfortunate that American favorites like baseball and stock-car racing don’t receive the recognition they truly deserve. But based on the pure aesthetics of the rendered concept, a majority of the audience does not seem to agree with those sentiments.

Braves vs. Reds in Bristol; Baseball’s grand entrance in Tennessee

According to Matthew Leach on the official MLB.com website, “A baseball diamond will be built across the track and infield of the legendary speedway… It will be primarily situated between Turns 3 and 4 of the track. The dimensions will be 330 feet down the lines, 400 to center field, 375 to the right-field alley, and 384 feet to the left-field alley.” Around it will lay the ghost of Bristol’s 0.533-mile layout, which has witnessed many battles unfold for ultimate short-track glory in NASCAR through roughly six decades.

From its earliest days, Bristol Motor Speedway had its due admirers. Unlike the hundreds of racetracks spread across the United States, The Last Great Colosseum earned its first NASCAR date only months after it broke ground in 1961. Interestingly, that same year, the facility also held its first inter-sport spectacle. It was an NFL exhibition game between the Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles, with around 8,500 people attending.

Billy Ray Barnes, who used to be the starting tailback for the Eagles back then, claimed that the Redskins had lost that game. Although track founder Larry Carrier once admitted that the Bristol Motor Speedway itself was the real loser that day, suffering losses of $36,000 because of the event.

On the racing side of things, since 1961, Bristol Motor Speedway has been witness to 46 different Cup winners in 126 outings. Its acclaim for being the ‘world’s fastest half-mile’ only grew by the decade. The only short track greater in popularity in all its years of existence has been the Martinsville Speedway, NASCAR’s only active oval that has been on the schedule since the very beginning. It is safe to say that this Tennessee short track has certainly elevated the cultural acclaim of the Volunteer State with each year of its annual evolution.

Next, Bristol turned it up to eleven when it hosted its second crossport event in 2016, a college football game between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Virginia Tech Hokies, better known as the Battle at Bristol. The reception from the developments was so positive that Bristol played host to another football game a week later, this time for an NCAA Division I FCS game between the East Tennessee State Buccaneers and the Western Carolina Catamounts. When the MLB makes its big Tennessee advance on the racetrack next August, it will mark almost a decade since a different sport found its way onto the infields of the titan that they call the Bristol Motor Speedway.

But on the flip side lay quite a grim picture. Bristol Motor Speedway faced a serious attendance crisis in the 2010s during a NASCAR event. Crowds dwindled by over 75% from its peak attendance until the end of the decade, forcing the overseers to close off entire grandstand sections. A desperate attempt to revitalize fan interest led to the bold decision to transform the track into a temporary dirt oval from the 2020 spring race onwards to run the Bristol Dirt Race. Although that reignited people’s interest in Bristol’s racing product, numbers for the subsequent Night Race saw it emerge as the least-watched NASCAR race of the 2023 calendar.

It seemed like Bristol had lost a lot of its resale value at the beginning of the year. And with the inception of the Next-Gen car, finding a fix for its sub-par racing display has turned almost nigh impossible. Hence, NASCAR switched back to its old formula with the Food City 500 earlier this year.

As it stands, something must change for Bristol. With this recently announced NASCAR-MLB crossover, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is expecting “hundreds of millions of dollars” worth of economic growth from the event. But as for the grandstands? They have been drawing some concerning conclusions in advance.

Fans not in appreciation of the Speedway Classic ’25

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The promotions for this one-of-a-kind event are running unrestrained almost a year in advance. On Friday morning, baseball legends Eric Davis and Chipper Jones, current NASCAR stars Chase Elliott and Ross Chastain, and former NASCAR Cup champion Kevin Harvick, along with a bunch of other representatives from both NASCAR & MLB, made the official announcements from Bristol. Followed by 3D concept images, the hype looks real certainly. But will any of it live up to its promise in the outlined future? That is the question.

Located almost similar distances from the homes of the Braves and the Reds, one MLB fan took a reasonable jab at that sentiment, writing, “Bristol will finally be full for once in 20 years.” Others reminisced, “Tennessee football game there was chaos.” and one even said, “Can’t imagine this will be much different” from their prior experience.

Other MLB fans had some hefty demands for a potential crossover weekend. “Now if NASCAR was happening while the game was going on, that I could get behind. But this feels like a terrible place for a baseball game,” read one hopeful comment. The logistics of an event of that capacity would be almost unimaginable, in the least.

But the concept of the one in question itself has many saying, “What a waste of time, money and resources!” Some observant fans noted, “If you’re not in the infield, why would you go? You’re sitting a mile away. This is a horrendous idea.” While others jibed [potentially MLB fans], “Do you get a free pair of binoculars with each ticket?”

Regardless, the plans for this extravagant idea are already in motion. Whether it tanks or takes both sports to the very top remains to be seen. That said, does this crossover serve either series any benefits in the long run? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.