The spectacle of major sporting events does not simply distract from a city's crackdown on the working class. It is a mechanism through which it is normalized and accelerated.
The prospect of the Super Bowl and Wrestlemania coming to Nashville, Tennessee (U.S.) may seem like good news for sports fans in this city like me. When I initially saw the news I did have a sense of excitement of possibly attending two major sporting events I enjoy. There lies a contradiction for myself and others. We must be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that the idea of these two major events coming to Nashville comes with negative consequences as well. Entertainment can be weaponized. In this case the spectacle of the Super Bowl and Wrestlemania hide the more sinister motives of militarization, increased policing, and corporate welfare for the already wealthy.
Stadiums themselves are places where sports and politics are connected very deeply. Frank Andre Guridy’s The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest and Play provides a critical framework to understanding modern day stadiums not only as sports venues, but as sites of a new form of ‘territorial colonization’. Nashville exemplifies this dynamic as it is building a new stadium which was fiercely contested by the community. The Stadium provides a framework for why this struggle occurred and how this stadium will entrench more militarism and drive more Nashvillians out of their city.
In recent years; Tennessee has made most of its money from tourism with Nashville, specifically its downtown, serving as the epicenter. Places like the entertainment district/street of Broadway, the Convention Center, and even the future new stadium are all geared towards this tourism economy. This is where we start to see the first instances of militarization with the arrest & removal of houseless people by a shadow police force and the installation of various surveillance technologies for “public safety”. To illustrate the importance of this tourism; Elon Musk is currently building an underground tunnel that will connect the airport directly to downtown, similar to the Las Vegas Loop. The investment in the tourist economy in Nashville is similar to the tourist economy in Caribbean nations; where these resorts (owned by corporations) make profits, exploit the land, and the majority of the population do not see those profits in the development of their nations. Tourists come to Nashville, spend a lot of money, and residents get more militarization and less investment in our social services. This will increase with the new stadium.
Guridy identifies modern day stadiums as ‘territorial colonization’ where he speaks of how developers’ and sports teams’ interests align and sell the public on false ideas of how building new stadiums will generate more economic growth, job creation, and more tourism. Nonetheless, as with colonization, these stadiums do not generate economic growth or job creation; they generate exploitation. The construction of new stadiums are passed onto the taxpayers while the developers and sports teams receive tax breaks.. Nashvillians were not fooled by false promises. We correctly identified that taxpayers will bear the cost for this stadium; which is why these concerns were ignored. Nashvillians ended up being on the hook for the largest subsidy for an NFL stadium in U.S. History. Nashvillians will be exploited, but this city sees it as an opportunity for more tourism to be injected into the economy. This isn’t just about tourism though; it is clear that Nashville is becoming a place to accommodate whiter, more affluent crowds regardless if they are tourists or not. When that new stadium opens; the taxpayers that paid for its construction more than likely won’t be able to afford to attend a game. How can a working-class person afford tickets ranging from $750-$75,000? But rest assured; a working-class, Black/African, Brown person will be seen on the field playing the game, working the concession stands, serving as custodians, or working security outside.
It should be important to note that the new stadium deal is also directly tied to the redevelopment of the East Bank where the city will build more luxury high-rises, an entertainment district, and the new World Headquarters for the Oracle Corporation run by Larry Ellison. Here we start to see the first instances of increasing militarization through surveillance. Oracle has deep connections with the Department of War (Defense) offering solutions on “rising global tensions”, providing intelligence, and also envisioning artificial intelligence powered surveillance. At one point Ellison commented that, “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we will be constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on,” and a few months after this comment; Oracle brought Tik-Tok combining its software with the social media application claiming that it will be “monitoring security threats”. Focusing on housing, most of the high-rises downtown are empty because they are unaffordable. Like a resort on a Caribbean island; downtown is mostly isolated from people who have lived in Nashville their entire lives. The development of the East Bank will reportedly have a sealed-off “experience” and serve as an entertainment district for the new stadium providing theater and concerts. There has also been discussion of adding a sphere similar to the Las Vegas sphere. This brings us back to the central theme: entertainment as militarization.
To prepare for the completion of the new stadium, slated for 2027, downtown has also been preparing by increasing the militarization. Downtown has become increasingly hostile to homeless people. It was noted above how downtown business owners, all serving with the Nashville Downtown Partnership non-profit, hired their own shadow police force to violently remove homeless people. Benches have been removed from downtown to prevent homeless people from sleeping there and even the attempts by concerned community members to replace these benches were also met with hostility. The most important point is the increase in surveillance by adding more cameras, command posts, police towers, armored “rescue” vehicles, and there is talks to add drones as “first responders.” The Super Bowl and WrestleMania occurring in this new stadium will expand surveillance and more broadly the militarization to unprecedented levels.
When the NFL and WWE come to a city; they quite literally take over. Events, such as the Super Bowl and WrestleMania turn host cities into military zones. This militarization manifests as drone surveillance (which our police plan to ask for), facial recognition, and the saturation of federal police forces combined with the Metro Nashville Police. While the citizens of Nashville might celebrate what are called accomplishments for our city; it is having an effect of normalizing militarization and on the population. The NFL and WWE both have ties to the military and this current administration. The NFL has turned their stadiums into sites of militarized nationalism; they supported the Vietnam War, they celebrate the military and conservatism, and after 9/11 most sports franchises partnered with the police. The WWE has Donald Trump in their Hall of Fame, Triple H, the current WWE star, serves on the Trump Administration to revive the Presidential Fitness Test making “Make America Fit Again”, and another wrestler named El Grande Americano, plays off the “Gulf of America” renamed by Trump. Both of these institutions are deeply entrenched within the political sphere while telling the rest of us that these aren’t the places for politics. Politics is the deepest connection here; understanding the context of downtown Nashville means understanding that a lot of the bars on Broadway are owned by deeply reactionary celebrities, such as Kid Rock who is also a Trump supporter. This is how they normalize the rest of us to accept more and more militarization. We go to stadiums, walk past the gate containing numerous surveillance and militarized equipment, and participate in entertainment while they collect our data and monitor us.
All of these roads have been paved by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism prioritizes privatization and utilizing public funds for private means. It was our city administration that voted to approve the stadium, it was our city administration that tied the development of the East Bank to the stadium, it was our city administration that voted for more surveillance, it is our city administration that continues to give police more money and more technologies year after year, and it is this same city administration that claims it’s is always a tight budget year and so whatever investments working-class people receive amounts to peanuts. These are liberals/Democrats in a neoliberal city. While our leaders like to complain about the state; they often work with the Republican-controlled state (the state wanted this stadium too) against our interests.
We must keep a clear eye. Entertainment as militarization is war. This war comes at us on many different fronts; we have economic warfare, warfare on our education, war on our health, and entertainment exists within cultural war. Sports are beloved; globally. We have seen instances where sports and stadiums have been used as sites of revolutionary struggle, but they have also been used as sites for reactionary cultural projections. Long live Tommie Smith and John Carlos who raised the Black Power Fist in 1968, but also remember the 1936 Olympics that took place in Nazi Germany. Today; the Olympics and World Cup will take place in the United States, while we have citizens being kidnapped off the street; but we also see how the Black Alliance for Peace is calling for the games to be moved to oppose the normalization of genocide and international gangsterism. Nashville is not exempt from this struggle as seen when we were rightfully angry about the stadium deal itself. So as the Super Bowl and WrestleMania are pushed to the forefront, we must not get distracted by the spectacle and this spectacle will continue. NASCAR is here, the city attempted to acquire a WNBA team, and there has also been recent talk about moving the Memphis Grizzlies to Nashville. We cannot be distracted by these spectacles and we must combat the war being waged to allow them.
Wolfgang Bronner is a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, Nashville City-Wide Alliance. He is an organizer, gun-safety trainer, and librarian currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee.
References
Guridy, Frank Andre. The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play. First ed., Basic Books, 2024.
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