NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The home of the Tennessee Titans has a new name. After nine years as LP Field, the football venue will now be known as Nissan Stadium.
Team leaders, and Nissan management, made the announcement Thursday afternoon at the stadium. It’s a deal both sides have worked on for the last 18 months.
"It elevates both the Titans, and Nissan. And Titan is also a brand of Nissan, so there's a great synergy there between a sports team and an iconic brand, worldwide," said Steve Underwood, the Titans interim President and CEO.
Nissan will have its name on the stadium for the next two decades. Company managers said the Titans were the perfect team to partner with for national publicity.
"Sports marketing is a big part of what we're going forward, to make sure we create positive brand awareness the Nissan brand," said Fred Diaz from Nissan North America.
The automaker has already had a very large presence in the Middle Tennessee area. Its corporate headquarters has been located in Franklin, its largest North American manufacturing plant has produced 650,000 vehicles a year in Smyrna, and it has an engine plant in Decherd. Nissan has employed 12,000 people in the region.
The name change would also come with a cosmetic refresh for the 16-year-old stadium. The most notable change would be the addition of red paint on the outside of the structure. The team would also remodel several areas inside the stadium.
"We have a number of important face lifts that are going to take place in the building. For example, we are going to replace all of our suite furniture, all of our club furniture. This place will look completely different by the time the season starts,” Underwood said.
This was the fourth name for the home of the Tennessee Titans. The stadium opened in August of 1999 as Adelphia Coliseum. That name continued until Adelphia went bankrupt in 2002.
From 2002 until 2004, the stadium was simply known as The Coliseum.
In 2006 Nashville-based Louisiana Pacific Building Products bought the naming rights for the stadium. It was a ten-year deal, worth $30 million. The company was released from the last year of its contract with the Titans.
Louisiana Pacific would continue to be a corporate sponsor of the Titans, and would have a suite at the stadium that once had its name.
