User:GhostRiver/bridgestone

Planning
On February 4, 1993, then-Mayor of Nashville Phil Bredesen informed the Metropolitan Council of Nashville and Davidson County that he was in need of $150,000 to begin work on a multi-purpose sports and music venue in downtown Nashville, with plans to open in mid-1996. He proposed his vision to the citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, on April 1 in the now-famous "helicopter speech", which detailed Breseden's ideal image of how the Broadway district of Nashville would appear from the aerial view of a helicopter. In Bredesen's original conception, the main purpose of a 25,000-capacity arena on Broadway was not for athletics, but to encourage touring musicians to schedule a performance in Nashville rather than in nearby Murfreesboro. "The sports thing," Bredesen told reporters in 2016, "really came along a little bit later." Despite this, the city began looking in earnest for a permanent athletic tenant in late May, when Edward Gaylord applied for a National Basketball Association (NBA) expansion team that would make its home in the arena. At the end of the month, the Ohio Valley Conference decided to move its annual men's basketball tournament, which had previously taken place in Lexington, Kentucky, to Nashville. They would play at either the Memorial Gymnasium or Nashville Municipal Auditorium until the new arena was completed. Soon after, the Southeastern Conference said that they would consider the new Nashville arena as a neutral site for their own men's basketball tournament.

Naming rights and ownership
In 1999, the Gaylord Entertainment Company struck a 20-year, $80 million deal with the arena owners for the naming rights to the arena in Nashville; the deal worked out to $4 million annually going to the Predators franchise.

College basketball
In 2018, the SEC renewed its agreement with the Nashville Sports Council to keep the tournament at Bridgestone through at least 2030, with options extending through 2035.