Q&A part 1: Churchill CEO Carstanjen on Triple Crown

Louisville, Ky.

When Churchill Downs Inc. made an $85 million bid this spring to buy the intellectual-property rights to the Preakness, it went to the core of the Triple Crown, perhaps racing’s greatest tradition.

When the state of Maryland exercised its right to match the offer, block Churchill and keep those rights, it triggered a series of events that led to the Preakness being moved back eight days to fall three weekends after the Kentucky Derby.

It could have been longer.

“Potentially move it later in the summer, so after the Belmont.”

Ron Flatter Racing Pod: Full interview with Carstanjen.

That was how Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstanjen put it when asked the big what if. What if Maryland had not matched CDI’s bid?

But Maryland did, and CDI responded by forming a partnership with the New York Racing Association. Traditional dates for the Derby and Belmont Stakes were locked in place, keeping them exactly five Saturdays apart in May and June. That deal also included the introduction of the Thoroughbred Championship Series, a bloc of six existing races to determine the best 3-year-old in the country without needing to set foot at Pimlico in May.

In a wide-ranging interview for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod, Carstanjen talked about the future of the Triple Crown. With some touch-up edits for clarity, here is the first of four parts in this Q&A:

August was quite a month for horse racing, and it began with the remapping of the Triple Crown. We know the Kentucky Derby is going to stay put, where it always is and always should be. The Preakness now is 22 days later, not 14. The Belmont Stakes is still 35 days later, but only 13 after the Preakness. Churchill and NYRA introduced the Thoroughbred Championship Series, which will include the Derby, Belmont, Matt Winn (G3), Jim Dandy (G2), Travers (G1) and a Churchill Downs race to be determined. Have you determined the sixth race yet?

Yeah, we’re finalizing the details of all of that, so more to come on that.

The state of Maryland matched your $85 million bid to buy the intellectual-property rights to the Preakness. If you had been able to get those rights, and if Maryland had not matched, what was your intention for the Preakness?

Well, our first intention would have been really to figure it out with NYRA but potentially move it later in the summer, so after the Belmont.

I know you are not NYRA CEO David O’Rourke, but you do have the agreement now with NYRA. Do you get the sense that they may consider moving the Belmont Stakes?

I don’t get that sense at all that they’re considering that. I think it was a really aggressive move by the folks in Maryland to move their race (back) another week, resulting in it being 13 days before the Belmont.

What’s your read on Maryland even deciding it was going to go ahead and spend $85 million dollars? When we chatted this summer, I raised my eyebrows and wondered if the state of Maryland is fully realizing what it’s getting into by diving this far into the horse-racing business?

I think they already spent the $85 million, so I think they’ve closed that transaction and acquired the intellectual-property rights to go along with all the other rights they have. I think they’re not half-pregnant anymore. They’re fully pregnant now. I think the state’s in the Thoroughbred game, and we, of course, wish them well as they sort through some of the myriad of problems that Maryland racing has.

Were you disappointed that you didn’t get the IP rights to the Preakness?

Ultimately, we understood. I think Maryland looks at this through a political lens, and we look at this through a marketing lens. Thoroughbred racing as a game and as a business product, those are the lenses we look at it. I think Maryland, at the political level, felt like they needed to feel secure in their ownership and the direction of that asset. That’s the choice that they took. They let their money talk, and I certainly respect that and the sentiment behind that. The state really cares about the Preakness and Thoroughbred racing and wants to invest in it. I certainly have to respect that, and I took it all in stride.

Is the Triple Crown in danger?

The Triple Crown has had some disadvantages that have only gotten worse over time. It’s really clear that trainers in general, in 2026 and in this period of time, they want more rest for their horses.

You come out of the Derby, and the Derby is a very taxing race. It’s 20 horses, it’s in front of 150,000 people, there’s a lot of pressure and a very, very aggressive race. Horses come out of that tired, and they need to recuperate and get ready for the next race. There is that challenge in the modern era where they’re not running their horses back so quickly.

You marry that with the fact that most sports we have in the United States have a champion every year. And every year there’s a story and a drama that unfolds as the athletes and the teams compete against each other over an extended period of time over a season. With the Triple Crown we generally weren’t having that. At the conclusion of the Derby, there was only one horse that could win the Triple Crown. Often now we saw that horse wouldn’t run in the Preakness.

The Triple Crown has a tremendous historical legacy, but we are not history teachers. We have to entice our customers and entertain our customers every year. In the modern era the Triple Crown was already pretty challenged, even before you look at the lack of capital investment and the lack of any investment that’s been the story in Maryland for the last couple of decades.

How malleable is this six-race series? Could it become an eight-race series? Could you envision inviting, say, Monmouth Park in to bring the Haskell (G1) in, or maybe the Preakness under the circumstances that you would see proper for this?

The series is about continuing to capture the fan after the Derby. One thing that David O’Rourke and I had a lot of discussions about is, gosh, you have 25 million people watching the Derby. They’re interested in these horses. They’re interested in that race. They’re interested in that celebration. What happens to those people over the five months after that? The fact is we haven’t given those people enough of an entertainment product where they want to stick around.

This is our first attempt, our best foot forward, our best attempt to try to address that, to try to give the fan reasons to remain engaged, to be enthusiastic and to participate in our game for an extended period of time.

I don’t think anything has to be set in stone, but we did put our best foot forward. We think this is the right place to start, and I think we’ve got the right facilities to do this in.

The new Belmont Park, I was thrilled to see that. I thought that was just an outstanding effort, a real gem. I just think they really got it right. That’s part of putting our best foot forward as an industry.

Between Churchill Downs and the investments we’ve made there; Saratoga, which is just a special place in Americana; and now the new Belmont Park, which is really a statement piece of architecture and a statement facility for the industry, we’ve got three places that we’re really, really proud of to reintroduce America to the best of Thoroughbred racing.

How difficult a challenge is it to try to keep anyone’s attention nowadays for anything beyond, say, the greatest two minutes in sports every May, let alone beyond a Triple Crown?

It’s never been harder. I think American society is more fractured in terms of entertainment options than it’s ever been. Now it’s not just what’s on linear television. Now it’s what’s going on around the globe. Now it’s social media. There’s so many things that a consumer can spend their time and money on. Capturing their attention and holding their attention once you capture it, that’s a challenge for every sport, and it’s certainly a challenge for us. It’s a challenge that, as an industry, we weren’t really meeting prior to introducing this series.

You can see it in the television ratings. You can see it in the wagering handle. We can attract all these people as an industry to the game. We do it with Derby, but then we’d see a pretty precipitous decline immediately. We’ve got to fix that. As a game we can’t just talk about the past. We can’t just talk about 1945 or 1880. We can’t just talk about that.

We have to do things to engage the current consumer. They’re not looking for a history lesson from us. They’re looking for reasons to engage, so we have to really work hard as an industry to find those reasons to keep people engaged. And keeping these 20 horses that reach the Derby starting gate, keeping them in the game, giving them economic incentive to continue to compete against each other, that’s really important.

What happens to this series over time in terms of the flexibility? I think that’s a really good question, and I don’t think that has to be written in stone. What we want to do is take our customer feedback, learn from our customers and try our best to give them what they want. I do think that we’ll learn a lot during this first year of the series. We’ll learn a ton. Hopefully, we have to take those lessons with humility, with thoughtfulness, and turn those into future action that improves the product.

Did you get any feedback from Maryland once you announced the series as it came out in August?

I don’t really have a lot of interaction with the people in Maryland. One or two conversations here and there, but we’re not generally in touch. I’m not really in a place to tell you how they feel or what they’re thinking. Hopefully they’re focused on what they need to do to reinvent the customer equation for the Preakness and for Maryland racing in general. They have a big hill to climb to figure out what capital investment makes sense, what customer proposition will make sense to sort of rebuild Maryland racing to something it once was.

Q&A part 2 of 4: Churchill Downs CEO Bill Carstanjen discusses HISA.