Kentucky Derby Peaks at Record-Breaking 21.8 Million Viewers for NBC

Saturday’s live coverage of the 151st Kentucky Derby delivered its largest audience for NBC since 1989 with an average of 17.7 million viewers.

Viewership of the race peaked at 21.8 million viewers, a record for NBC.

Peacock achieved the highest traffic of all partnered streamers for the race. With the 151st Derby, NBC Sports had the largest streaming audience ever for a horse racing event, with an Average Minute Audience of 959,000 viewers. The network has achieved an average of more than 15 million viewers across all platforms for the last 10 of 12 Derbys.

Soverignty was the winner at Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, taking home a prize of $3.1 million. The horse was jockeyed by Junior Alvarado. The victory marked his first career win at the Kentucky Derby.

The other top finishers included Journalism, Baeza, and Final Gambit. 19 horses competed in the race.

Going into the Derby, Journalism was the favorite to win at 7/2 odds (via Kentucky Derby), followed by Sandman at 5-1 and Luxor Cafe at 8-1. Sovereignty had the fourth-best odds at 9-1 and American Promise had fifth best at 11-1.

The other horses who competed at the 151st Kentucky Derby were Citizen Bull, Neoquos, American Promise, Admire Daytona, Flying Mohawk, East Avenue, Publisher, Tiztastic, Render Judgement, Coal Battle, Chunk of Gold and Owen Almighty.

The total prize pot for the Derby is $5 million, split between the top five finishers. Second place took home $1 million, third place got $500,000, fourth received $250,000 and fifth got $150,000. The winning jockey, Alvarado, took home 10% of the first-place winnings, which is a cut of $310,000.