Scott Borchetta, CEO of Big Machine Records and one of the biggest businessmen in Nashville, took over as lead promoter of the new look IndyCar Series race on the Streets of Music City in December and realized pretty quickly that the event just didn’t make sense for 2024.
Prior to this year, he was a partner and title sponsor of the event, which ran on a different layout around the city. The 2024 race, scheduled as the season finale, would utilize more of the city and event organizers just realized it wasn’t currently viable.
For one, Borchetta couldn’t get a timely answer from the NFL about scheduling for the Titans but the construction of New Nissan Stadium also inhibited having both a race and the corresponding hospitality components, simultaneously.
“We flat don’t have all the lots that we need to house the teams,” Borchetta said. “We don’t have room for team hospitality. We don’t have a very specific answer from the NFL in regard to a Titans home game that could be on September 15th.
“The NFL will not release their schedule until May. We don’t have the type of access that I’m happy to present to downtown businesses and residents as far as a proper flow-through, deliveries, et cetera. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve just taken control of this really since December, and I know what I want to do to protect our brand, to protect the IndyCar brand, to make sure that the fans have a great experience, and every day it just started to become untenable to do it for this year.
“Now, if we had started a year ago on all of this stuff, which I was not in a leadership position, I was simply the sponsor at that point, some of these things could have been addressed.”
Thus, the decision was made to move the season finale to the nearby short oval Nashville Superspeedway in Lebanon.
Borchetta has a longstanding relationship with Speedway Motorsports owner Marcus Smith, which proved to be vital. Both Borchetta and Smith are invested in bringing marquee events to the Nashville area.
Smith purchased the speedway from Dover Motorsports in 2022 after it got a Cup race back in 2021 but is also trying to obtain the lease for Fairgrounds Speedway in downtown Nashville.
“He was ecstatic at the thought of bringing IndyCar back to the oval,” Borchetta said.
IndyCar hasn’t raced at Nashville Superspeedway since the 2008 season and the series objectively needed another oval race after losing Texas Motor Speedway anyway.
“For those of you who attended back in the day, and I attended all those races, you may remember that the IndyCar races were the best draw of all of them,” Borchetta said. “We didn’t have a Cup race, but we had a Busch race, we had a truck race, et cetera. The Indy cars always did the best. Some spectacular races there.”
The series and promotional group will still host hospitality events downtown. The pit stop contest will still take place within the city. There will be a rooftop party on both Friday and Saturday night. They just didn’t have the footprint to host the full racing event near Nissan Stadium this September.
There were also the political challenges, much like everything happening with the downtown short track, that also worked against the IndyCar event.
Technically, the event didn’t even have approval from city council yet because any event like this requires three readings of the contract before it even goes to a vote, which would then go to the mayor for approval.
All of that wouldn’t happen until April at the soonest.
Borchetta agreed that not enough due diligence was done with the previous event leadership.
“Yeah, I think that’s a somewhat fair assessment because the team had been doing it successfully on the prior track but I don’t think they really understood how much more it was going to take to actually run through what we call the Island downtown,” Borchetta said.
“So not having those conversations — they should have happened a year ago, and they didn’t, so that’s definitely part of the challenge. It didn’t give any of the municipalities the proper time to really understand and address this. So that was one of the big items for sure.”
There is also no guarantee this event will take place on the streets of Music City next season either as New Nissan Stadium will not be completed until 2027. Borchetta joked that construction cranes are the official city bird of Nashville.
The city and IndyCar signed a three year extension last summer.
“We want to keep racing in Nashville,” Borchetta said. “I’m not taking any chance of not putting on a great show in September (at the oval). I’m taking a lot of responsibility. I know a lot of things that we want to do, we’re going to do, and I want all of you on September 16th to say, they did a great job. That’s my goal. I know it’s a lot to ask from all of you, but I accept the challenge.
“Regarding when we could turn back into Nashville, it’s really just going to depend on our continued conversations. … We have the support of the city. We have the support of the state. When we can get back there, we will. “
And in the meantime, Borchetta vows to make the grounds of Nashville Superspeedway feel like a commensurate party as well.
“We’re going to make sure the midway is really rocking,” Borchetta said. “We’re going to have music from the time you walk in. There’s a lot of partners we’re already talking to about bringing their executables out there. More to come on that, but it’s going to be very lively from the time you hit the grounds.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.