Churchill-NYRA series less than meets the eye?
Seriously with this?
Frank Vespe
August 5, 2026
Maybe there’s a way to build general interest in racing. Perhaps there’s a path to extending racing’s “season” and its increasingly tenuous purchase on public attention.
Whatever that is, it doesn’t look like the dog’s breakfast of a hastily assembled, Triple Crown-killing series that Churchill Downs iNC. and NYRA announced earlier this week. The proposal may – or may not — slightly benefit those two companies in the short run, but it clearly will do more harm than good to an industry that specializes in self-inflicted wounds.
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Indeed, the longer you look at it, the less the Churchill-NYRA announcement looks like a Machiavellian masterstroke and the more it looks like a corporate fit of pique on the part of Churchill Downs Inc.
Churchill’s bid to own the Preakness intellectual property came a cropper, and now, it appears, it wants Maryland to pay.
The plan the companies outlined to create a “Thoroughbred Championship Series” makes no sense from a sporting perspective and arguably even less from the business side.
But it sure will put the screws to the Preakness.
The plan envisions a six-race series for three-year-olds from May through September, with a $5 million bonus to be split among the top participants.
So what’s the problem?
Start from the sporting side.
There are five two-turn, dirt races for sophomores that are Grade 1 events and contested after the Kentucky Derby. The CDI-NYRA proposal excludes three of the five: the Preakness, Haskell, and Pennsylvania Derby.
In their stead are a Grade 2 (the Jim Dandy), a Grade 3 (the Matt Winn), and a race that… err… doesn’t exist yet.
What’s more, it would replace the clarity of the Triple Crown – there’s one winner of each race, and if one horse wins all three, he’s remembered forever as the winner of the Triple Crown – with an as-yet undeveloped points system. Here’s what Churchill CEO Bill Carstanjen had to say about that on a media call Monday:
“You do not have to win every race or even any particular race to become the champion.”
Hooray?
As for the business end, whatever one thinks of recent editions of the Preakness or the quality of its fields, it has been and continues to be by reasonable business metrics – handle, television viewership — the second most consequential horse race contested in the United States.
Consider: in 2025, win-place-show wagering on the Preakness was over $27.4 million. That was more than triple the WPS betting on the Breeders’ Cup Classic and more than eight times what the Travers (with an admittedly short field) drew.
Preakness viewership this year – with a large and evenly matched but decidedly unglamorous field – peaked at 7.1 million viewers: five times last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic max.
That certainly makes the Preakness seem like a race you’d want to include were you trying to expand the racing brand.
“The Triple Crown is the brand for horse racing,” longtime industry insider Alan Foreman said on the Midlantic Racing Today podcast recently. “Trust me, there’s nothing else.”
The Triple Crown constitutes not only the sport’s biggest wagering days but also its only true vehicle for reaching beyond the racing bubble. That’s why any rational attempt to build a revitalized racing brand and attract new fans would start with the Triple Crown as its foundation
“This series is designed to showcase the sport’s best three-year-olds across a season-long championship, elevating our biggest events and creating the next generation of fans,” NYRA CEO David O’Rourke hyperbolized in a statement the companies issued.
But if building events with the cache of the Triple Crown races were easy, racing would be rife with them and handle would be booming. Instead, handle has plummeted in recent years and has been down in six of seven months this year versus last.
The way to elevate the sport’s biggest events is to, you know, start with the sport’s biggest events. And the way to create the next generation of fans is to start with the events they already know and build out from there. The CDI-NYRA proposal does neither.
The good news is that there’s still time for NYRA and Churchill to see the light and fix or kill this nonsensical series. Let’s hope they do.
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