Can Super Saver Save Horse-Racing Year-Round?

An inveterate horse-racing crowd of 155,804 attended Saturday’s running of the 136th Kentucky Derby. An additional record-breaking crowd watched from their living rooms, as Calvin Borel’s Super Saver won, drawing a 10.3/22 overnight rating on NBC Saturday — up a tick from last year's 10.2/22 rating.

The CEO of Louisville’s Churchill Downs, Bob Evans, would like to see the Triple Crown run as one series on one network, instead of divided between NBC and ESPN. There is precedent, as NBC broadcast all three races from 2001-2005.

“They’ve changed the way horse racing is presented,” Evans told the New York Times. NBC has produced the Triple Crown races, creating the epitome of branded entertainment, replete with pre-Derby hoopla that extends the franchise and deepens the ratings. They’ve also leveraged their ‘related’ networks, CNBC and Bravo, to promote the event and sell it as entertainment on shows like Today.

Women comprised 52% of the viewing audience in 2009 for the Derby, which attracted 16.3 million viewers – a 20 year high. NBC’s SVP Sports, Mike McCarley, believes that NBC's “ability to cross-promote to a broad audience, both men and women, is one of our biggest advantages.”

The costly rights negotiations between NBC and ESPN stem, in part, from the New York Racing Association’s ire at receiving only 25% of the $51.5 million NBC paid out between 2001-2005. Because of this, ESPN won TV rights to the Belmont.

Contracts are up this year – and the Triple Crown will be in negotiation between NBC and ESPN/ABC.

NBC and Evans want to continue to carry the Derby and the Preakness, and add the Belmont back – reclaiming it from ESPN, which had broadcast rights since 2006. ESPN wants to keep the Belmont, and add additional races from Belmont Park, and Saratgoa Race Course events (run by the NYRA).

Saturday's Kentucky Derby ratings were the highest in 18 years. However, “Horse racing's ills have become painfully familiar: Wagering and attendance are down; many barns and tracks are in financial trouble, while others have been propped up with slots and other forms of gambling,” according to one observer.

“But the sport's real problem is its irrelevance to the general public…until the public starts caring about horses more than one, two or three times a year, it's difficult to see much future in the sport of kings.”