Nashville SC

Nashville Soccer Club is an American professional soccer club based in Nashville, Tennessee. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Eastern Conference. The team spent two seasons in the USL Championship before joining MLS as an expansion team. The club plays its home matches at Geodis Park, the largest soccer-specific stadium in the United States. It is principally owned by John Ingram, owner of Ingram Industries, along with investors and partial owners the Turner family of Dollar General Stores.

Prior to the arrival of Nashville's MLS team, the city had various soccer teams which played in the lower divisions of American soccer. The most notable teams were the Nashville Metros who played from 1989 until 2012 and Nashville FC, who played in the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL) from 2013 to 2016. The city also hosts two NCAA Division I men's soccer teams, the Belmont Bruins and Lipscomb Bisons. The Vanderbilt Commodores also played Division I men's soccer until the team's demise after the 2005 season. Prior to these teams, the Nashville Diamonds participated in the then-second division American Soccer League for one season in 1982.

The NPSL team, Nashville FC, was founded by a supporters group that intended to form a team as a fan-owned group. Chris Jones, Nashville FC's president, cited existing fan-owned clubs as inspiration for NFC's foundation, in particular the English club F.C. United of Manchester. In February 2014, the two groups merged to form a single club for the 2014 NPSL season. The club had two teams participating in the Middle Tennessee Soccer Alliance, Nashville's largest competitive adult league, and had partnered with the Tennessee State Soccer Association (TSSA), an organization with over 20,000 registered players in the Middle Tennessee area alone. The team played its matches at Vanderbilt Stadium. The NPSL club had ambitions of climbing the American soccer pyramid, with the reported target an entry into the then third-tier United Soccer League (USL; now known as the USL Championship) by 2017, and then ascension into the Division II North American Soccer League by 2020.

Nashville SC was founded in 2016, when the USL awarded a franchise to the founding ownership group of the club. An existing team at the time, Nashville FC subsequently sold its team name, logo, and color scheme to then new USL franchise, in exchange for a 1 percent equity stake in the USL team and a voting seat on its board. In August 2016, a group of Nashville business leaders led by Bill Hagerty formed the Nashville MLS Organizing Committee and began efforts to secure funding for an MLS stadium. The group fully supported the recently awarded Nashville SC, which began play in 2018. Both groups supported each other in their common vision to grow the sport in Tennessee. Former 2010 MLS Cup winning coach Gary Smith was announced as the team's first manager in April 2017.

In October 2017, the group unveiled their plans for a $275 million stadium and redevelopment project, which was approved by the city in November.

The formal bid to add an MLS franchise to Nashville began in January 2017. On March 4, 2017, businessman John Ingram, under the entity Nashville Holdings LLC, bought a majority stake in DMD Soccer, the ownership group of Nashville SC. Ingram also headed up the bid to bring an MLS franchise to Nashville, and the partnership between Ingram and Nashville SC was an effort to present a united front to MLS after Nashville was named one of ten finalist cities for four MLS franchises.

MLS officially awarded an expansion team to Nashville on December 20, 2017, and announced that they would join the league in 2020. Mike Jacobs and Ian Ayre was announced as the Nashville's first general manager and CEO respectively.

On February 10, 2018, Nashville SC competed in their first game; in preseason against Atlanta United FC. In the rain-soaked contest, Nashville was defeated by Atlanta, 3–1, in front of 9,059 spectators.