• by Jon Last , Columnist, 8 hours ago

 When thoroughbred horse racing was the only live sport I could watch during the initial months of COVID shutdowns, I became a big fan. I was captivated by its pageantry, intrigued by the beauty and athleticism of the equine athletes themselves, and the dedication of the backstretch community of workers attending to them. 

As a sports industry researcher, I was curious about the business side of the sport and sought to learn more about whether the popular narrative that horse racing was dying was fact or simply media bashing.

Certainly, interest in thoroughbred racing interest is a far cry from its apex a few generations ago, when upwards of 40,000 people regularly converged on the recently shuttered Aqueduct Raceway in the late 1950s.

Recent years have seen the closure of multiple big market tracks and FanDuel TV (formerly TVG/ with blanket coverage) has dropped the sport, creating a void that Fox Sports and NBC have begun to fill. 

Yet the Kentucky Derby remains one of the most-viewed events in the country, with 19.6 million tuning in this year, sixth among all sports telecasts. 

Unfortunately, the media largely ignores racing the other 51 weeks of the year, despite a solid niche following illustrated by our own data, which showed a nice COVID-induced bump in those American sports fans who closely follow it, normalizing to about 9% over the past two years.

In an era where most sports have fueled growth by amplifying their playoffs, thoroughbred racing has seen a dilution of its Triple Crown series of races. Top contenders have largely chosen to skip the Preakness, the second leg of the Triple Crown sandwiched tightly between the Derby and Belmont Stakes.  Fragmented control of these three races precluded a scheduling change, until just a few months ago when Churchill Downs, operator of the Kentucky Derby attempted to buy the intellectual property of the Preakness.  The state of Maryland balked, matching the offer and killing the potential alliance.

Enter a partnership announced just last week between Churchill Downs and NYRA (New York Racing Association—operator of the Belmont Stakes) instituting a series of five championship races, including their respective Triple Crown races plus two other prominent Stakes events and a new culminating fifth race to create a points-driven multieevent competition for the best three-year-olds in the world.  The new series extends the season and has the promotional muscle of Fox and NBC behind it.  

Maryland responded by pushing The Preakness back a week, but that still leaves too narrow a time horizon between it and The Belmont. Absent another move, the Preakness is now even less relevant, which is unfortunate for such a storied race.

But I can’t fault Churchill/NYRA. They needed to do something to try to build interest in the sport through its most followed division and tried to keep the Triple Crown relevant with the offer for the Preakness. When that failed, they pivoted to the new series, which if successful, keeps interest up throughout the summer and elevates other significant races and the beautiful upstate New York Saratoga race course.   It’s a marketing move that hopefully invigorates the sport.