Kentucky Derby draws record 19.6 million viewers on NBC, Peacock
19.6 million viewers tuned in for the Derby, and NBC’s biggest horse-racing audience ever showed the sport still has rare pull.
19.6 million viewers watched the Kentucky Derby across NBC and Peacock, a record audience that showed just how much power the Run for the Roses still has when the right mix of star power, race drama and prime TV placement comes together.
NBC Sports said the 152nd Derby was its most-watched Kentucky Derby on record, up 11 percent from 17.7 million viewers last year. The race peaked at 24.4 million viewers between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m. Eastern, with coverage running from 6:32 to 7:27 p.m. Eastern. The streaming piece mattered too: Peacock delivered an average-minute audience of 1.3 million, NBC Sports’ largest streaming crowd ever for a horse racing event.
The numbers sharpen the commercial case for Churchill Downs and the broadcast partners that turn one Saturday in Louisville, Kentucky, into a national event. A Derby that can still pull nearly 20 million viewers is not just a ratings win; it is a premium inventory play for sponsors, a bargaining chip for broadcasters and proof that horse racing can still break through in a fragmented media market. NBC Sports also said the 2025 Derby had already been its biggest audience for the race since 1989, when Sunday Silence won and 18.5 million viewers tuned in.
This year’s televised surge came with an additional boost from the undercard. The Kentucky Oaks, run Friday night at Churchill Downs for the first time in primetime, averaged a record 2.4 million viewers on NBC and Peacock. That was four times the previous Oaks TV high of 593,000 viewers in 1997 on ESPN and nearly eight times the average of the last three years on USA Network. NBC scheduled the Oaks at 8:40 p.m. Eastern, moving it into a more prominent window and giving Derby week another showcase event with broad appeal.
On track, the race supplied the kind of finish that helps television numbers stick. Golden Tempo beat Renegade by a neck, Jose Ortiz picked up his first Kentucky Derby victory and Cherie DeVaux became the first woman to train a Derby winner. Those results gave NBC a race with a clear payoff, and they gave Churchill Downs another argument that Derby weekend can be more than a single spectacle. NBC Sports has now averaged more than 15 million viewers across all platforms for 11 of the last 13 Kentucky Derbies held in May, and the 2026 data showed the sport’s biggest day can still pull casual fans in when the spotlight is brightest.
NBC Sports said official 2026 metrics would be released Tuesday, but the headline was already clear: the Derby remains one of horse racing’s most valuable commercial assets, and its reach still stretches well beyond the rail.
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