Bob Pockrass

FOX NASCAR Insider

Gentlemen, start winding up.

In one of baseball’s rarest settings, the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds will play a regular season game on August 2, 2025, at Bristol Motor Speedway.

The legendary racetrack, which hosted the 2016 college football game between Tennessee and Virginia Tech, and Major League Baseball will look to pack more than 100,000 fans into the facility for the MLB Speedway Classic. FOX will televise the historic game, which begins next year on Saturday night at 7 p.m. ET.

“Major League Baseball is excited to deliver a special game at Bristol Motor Speedway, a unique setting that sports fans will remember forever,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. “The Reds and Braves are an ideal matchup because of their dynamic talent and the proximity of their markets.”

“We look forward to celebrating our game with a large number of fans on and off the field all weekend long and highlighting the rich traditions of sports, music and community in Tennessee and the entire region.”

The record attendance for an MLB game is 115,300 and was set in March 2008 at a friendly between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Whether that record will be broken at this event (Bristol is not releasing seating capacity for the game) is difficult to predict, given an Appalachian facility that normally hosts racers lapping a steep, 0.53-mile (0.867-kilometer) concrete track.

Next August, only balls will reach 100 miles per hour in Bristol. The game will be the finale of a three-game home series for the Reds, played Friday and Saturday in Cincinnati, with Sunday, August 3, being played as an alternate date if necessary.

This will be the first MLB game in Tennessee, making Tennessee the fifth state since 2016 to host its first MLB contest.

Located in northeast Tennessee, about 15 minutes from Bristol’s unique Main Street, which forms the border between Tennessee and Virginia, the Bristol weekend will feature live music in an area known for its deep country music roots.

Although the NASCAR schedule is not announced, Bristol typically hosts the big NASCAR weekends in the spring in mid-April and then again in September, giving MLB a few months to build the field.

To build the field, MLB will hire architectural firm Populous and landscaping company BrightView, partners it has used for previous games, including the recent one at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bristol will have to make some adjustments to its facility, removing part of the pit lane wall and one of the buildings where tires are mounted on wheels during the race weekend. Field dimensions are 330 feet along the lines, 400 feet to the center, and 384 (left-center) and 375 (right-center) in the power alleys.

“Bristol and the area, long considered the heart of the Appalachian League, have a long baseball tradition,” said Jerry Caldwell, general manager of Bristol Motor Speedway. “In addition, Bristol’s location makes it the perfect meeting place for a showdown between these two popular clubs.”

Ticket prices were not announced Friday. Braves, Reds and Bristol season ticket holders will be the first to purchase tickets in September, with public ticket sales beginning in December.

Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR for FOX Sports. He has covered motorsports for decades, including over 30 Daytona 500s, and has worked for ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene Magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @Subscribe.

Get more out of the NASCAR Cup Series Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more