Kentucky Derby 2026: Immortality and ebb

Q: What were the betting figures for the Kentucky Derby in 2025?

A record $349 million was wagered on Derby day in 2025, with $234 million on the Derby race alone.

Q: How has Churchill Downs Inc. performed financially in recent years?

Churchill Downs Inc. reported record net revenue of $2.93 billion in 2025, up 7% from 2024.

Q: What challenges is the horse racing industry currently facing?

The horse racing industry is struggling with an aging fan base, declining popularity, and competition from other sports and gambling options.

Q: What renovations are planned for Churchill Downs?

Churchill Downs Inc. has announced a $300 million grandstand renovation set to be completed in 2028.

The field moves into the first turn of the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby in 2024. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/BDk7U17pnB.Xubj1TBz0eA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTY0MDtjZj13ZWJw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/kentucky\_lantern\_articles\_259/29b05967a94276537da322c743615602) The field moves into the first turn of the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby in 2024. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images) There’s a gaping asymmetry between the Kentucky Derby and American horse racing. The nation’s most famous race, to be run for the 152nd time at Churchill Downs in Louisville Saturday, stands as the shining city on a hill amid the growing rubble of its sport and industry. A neophyte, if one can be found in the age of AI, might marvel at the prosperity of one and malady of the other. Start with the prosperity. For the greater part of a century, the Derby has been the dream of owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, hot walkers — racing’s backbone people. The golden ring. Secretariat won it, and Aristides first and Sovereignty last year and a multitude of others in between, greats and one-hit wonders, their names etched in the annals of sport. Bigger than the race is its cosmic surround. The manicured, millionaire-plus stud and broodmare farms of the Bluegrass, the limestone fences lining historic pikes, the karst creeks that flow past bourbon distilleries and into the narrow, winding river that gave the state its name and, at the center of it all, the eclectic Ohio River city and its storied and sprawling track in the middle of a (diminishing) blue-collar neighborhood. Each year, with a Kentucky spring in bloom and Louisville primed after a weeks-long festival, more than 140,000 people pack Churchill Downs to be part of a bucket-list experience. That the event’s nostalgic Americana has been long cultivated and increasingly orchestrated doesn’t seem to deter them. Most pay — after hotel, couture, limo — thousands for reserved seats, carving-station food, pre-mixed mint juleps, neat Old Forester, canned White Claw and more. (Even standing-room admission can run $500 plus.) And they bet a lot of money. Last year, a record $349 million was wagered on Derby day from all sources, up 9% from 2024, with a record $234 million of that on the Derby race alone. On-track attendance was 147,000 on a rainy day, down 6% from 2024 (the record of 170,513 was set in 2015). And an average of 17.7 million viewers watched the race on NBC and Peacock, the most since 1989.

Bettors line up to place their wagers at Churchill Downs on Derby Day in 2025. (McKenna Horsley/Kentucky Lantern) “The Derby is firing on all cylinders,” said Bill Carstanjen, CEO of Churchill Downs Inc., the track’s corporate parent. A nationally leading racing, online wagering and gaming company, CDI oversees some 30 casinos and racing properties, including Churchill Downs, across 14 states. The company, which is publicly traded, had record net revenue of $2.93 billion last year, up 7% from 2024. (Its net income of $384 million was down 10% from 2024, due mostly to a one-time charge related to a New Hampshire casino.) Of CDI’s 2025 revenue growth, 84% came from historical horse racing in Virginia and Kentucky. (HHR, an electronic gambling product where players bet past races on slot machine-like devices, has dramatically boosted purses in Kentucky and other states where it’s legal.) Over the past two decades CDI has spent some $700 million on capital projects at Churchill that have corporatized the track and transformed it into an entertainment facility, with a profusion of new and renovated hospitality spaces and suites, and redeveloped its South Louisville neighborhood with gentrified entrances and parking lots. It recently announced plans for a $300 million grandstand renovation to be completed in 2028. As CDI has diversified — “The Kentucky Derby is just the beginning” is one of its website’s headlines — and it and its flagship race have posted record profits, the industry around it has floundered. That’s the asymmetry and conundrum, the malady with no cure in sight. In the 1930s and ’40s, when horse racing was America’s “sport of kings,” its stands were full and its stars — Man o’War, War Admiral, Seabiscuit, Whirlaway, Citation — were household names, chronicled in newspapers and featured in Hollywood newsreels. But by the 1960s, with notable exceptions like Secretariat in the 1970s, the sport started receding in popularity and the national consciousness and the industry began to decline. Its early problems — an aging and shrinking fan base, the rise of other sports like the NBA and NFL, marginal TV coverage, and competition from casinos and state lotteries — were interconnected and well known. Before long, handle dropped, field sizes shrank and racetracks closed, including CDI-owned Hollywood Park in greater Los Angeles, where the first Breeders’ Cup was held. (It’s now the site of SoFi Stadium.) There were drug scandals involving prominent trainers that led to suspensions for some and federal indictments and convictions for others. On-track horse deaths became national news and forced major tracks, including Churchill and Santa Anita Park in California, to close for investigations of surfaces and training practices. And rapidly expanding legalized sports betting soon added to the proliferating troubles. There are new concerns. One arose in Florida last year when The Stronach Group, which owns Gulfstream Park (and Santa Anita), proposed decoupling the track from its revenue-linked casino and closing it in a few years. Opposed by local horsemen, the proposal’s fate is unclear. Another, the planned demise of the country’s major horse racing channel, came last month when FanDuel TV announced it will phase out over the next 20 months and cease operating by the end of 2027. (Its race betting app will continue.) The industry’s most recent highly-charged issue is computer assisted wagering or CAW, which uses advanced algorithms and high-speed computing to analyze data sets on horses, pool sizes, odds movements and more to identify and exploit inefficiencies and then execute thousands of large-scale, automated bets in the blink of an eye. Average fans, even those betting hundreds on a race, can’t compete with it. CAW is conducted by a handful of teams through betting platforms owned by major racetrack operators, which rebate the bets out of their takeout. The largest platform, Elite Turf Club, is owned by The Stronach Group and the New York Racing Association; another, Velocity, is a CDI entity. CAW wagering is estimated at $3 billion to $4 billion a year, accounting for some 30% or more of annual racetrack handle. A class-action lawsuit was filed last fall in the federal court for the Eastern District of New York alleging CAW platforms colluded to disadvantage everyday bettors in a rigged system favoring the wealthy. According to the suit, AI and other advances in technology have led to the unfair transfer of billions to a small group of inside bettors and the operators of racetracks and betting platforms. It may take years to resolve, but the suit, if successful, could radically change how the American racing industry operates. CAW and the rest of these issues — longstanding and recent — are increasing straws on the camel’s back driving existing and potential fans away from racing. The Derby and CDI aren’t immune from this situation, of course. Evidence Churchill’s horse deaths, its numerous trainer suspensions, the disqualification of the 2021 Derby winner for failing a post-race blood test, the company’s CAW connections and more. But CDI’s diversification and vertical integration of its gaming operations, the Derby’s entrenched Americana and a (mostly) sympathetic state government have given both some separation from the industry upheaval. In 1955, not too long before racing’s decline began, William Faulkner wrote an essay about the Derby for Sports Illustrated. Titled “Kentucky: May: Saturday,” it became a classic of racing literature. (Its Southern Gothic reverence met its antipode in another such classic, the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson’s 1970 short story “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.”) At the heart of Faulkner’s essay is this about the Derby winner: “And now he stands beneath the rose escarpment above the flash and glare of the magnesium and the whirring film of celluloid immortality. This is the moment, the peak, the pinnacle; after this, all is ebb.” The ebb for Faulkner was the post-race denouement, the emotional letdown after the transcendence of victory. Now, half a century later, his immortal pinnacle of winning remains. But the ebb seems more a sport and industry few care about, fading to a close.