Kentucky Derby, Oaks post record viewership on NBC, Peacock

NBC Sports’ presentation of Saturday’s history-making Kentucky Derby delivered the most-watched run for the roses on record, with an average of 19.6 million viewers on NBC and Peacock.

That topped by 11% last year’s Derby audience of 17.7 million viewers, which was the event’s largest in 36 years,  according to preliminary data from Nielsen and digital data from Adobe Analytics.. The previous high was 18.5 million viewers in 1989 for Sunday Silence's victory.

Viewership peaked at 24.4 million viewers from 7-7:15 p.m. EDT, as jockey Jose Ortiz guided Golden Tempo around the final turn to win by a neck over Renegade and make Cherie DeVaux the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner. The peak audience was also the largest ever for an NBC Sports presentation of the Kentucky Derby, up 12% from 21.8 million last year.

Saturday was the second consecutive record-setting day at Churchill Downs, following Friday night’s Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks, which was contested for the first time under the lights in primetime. NBC Sports’ presentation of Always A Runner's victory averaged a record 2.4 million viewers on NBC and Peacock, four times the prior Kentucky Oaks record of 593,000 viewers in 1997 on ESPN and nearly eight times the average of the last three years’ audiences, which was 304,000 on USA Network.

Led by Peacock, the run for the roses posted NBC Sports’ largest streaming audience for a horse racing event with an average minute audience of 1.3 million viewers, up 36% from last year and nearly doubling 2024.

NBC Sports has averaged 15+ million viewers across all platforms for 11 of the last 13 Kentucky Derby races held in May. That excludes the 2020 Covid-impacted event, which was moved to September.

With 19.6 million viewers from 6:32 to 7:27 p.m., the 2026 Kentucky Derby will rank as NBC’s most-watched Saturday program since the Milan Cortina Olympics.