Betting on Preakness down 6.2 percent
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Total commingled betting on the Preakness Stakes at Laurel Park on Saturday was down 6.2 percent compared to strong betting on the race last year, according to charts of the races.
The $63.2 million bet this year, including all multi-race wagers ending in the Preakness, was $4.1 million short of last year’s $67.3 million, the second-highest amount bet on the second leg of the Triple Crown. For both this year’s Preakness and last year’s Preakness, the winner of the Kentucky Derby skipped the race.
This year’s Preakness had 14 runners, while last year’s had nine runners. The Preakness this year had an extremely competitive field, with the favorite going off at 4.7-1 and six other horses going off at odds of less than 10-1, but the field lacked any national star power.
The Preakness this year was run at Laurel Park midway between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore due to ongoing renovations at the race’s longtime home, Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. Attendance at Laurel was capped at 4,800 people. The race is scheduled to return to Pimlico next year.
Total commingled wagering on the entire 14-race card at Laurel was $108.99 million, down 1.5 percent compared to last year’s 14-race card, according to the charts. The total number of runners on this year’s card was 122 compared to 109 last year, and the whole-card total was helped by strong betting on the last race of the card, a 10-horse maiden special weight race. Betting on that race was $5.71 million, up 134 percent over last year’s final race.
Betting on last year’s Preakness jumped 11.3 percent compared to the 2024 edition of the race despite the decision by the connections of the Derby winner, Sovereignty, to skip the race. Betting on Sovereignty’s Derby was up 12.2 percent, in a year in which the run-up to the Triple Crown benefited by strong and consistent performances from a handful of runners and publicity from a Netflix series on racing released earlier in the year.
This year’s Triple Crown lost its most highly regarded candidates early in the year to injuries, and the Derby this year had no clear favorite. The race was won by Golden Tempo at 23-1. Betting on this year’s Derby was down 3 percent.
In this year’s Preakness, betting was down in all the single-race pools, with win, place, and show wagering falling 6.5 percent and betting in the exacta and trifecta pools dropping 2.3 percent and 3 percent, respectively. Betting in the superfecta was down 5.2 percent.
Betting in many of the multi-race pools ending in the Preakness was down significantly, but all the multi-race bets had mandatory payouts last year, which was not the case this year.
Correction: Because of an error on the chart issued immediately after the Preakness regarding the amount bet on the pick six ending in the race, an earlier version of this article said that betting on the Preakness was $61.9 million, down 8 percent compared to the 2025 Preakness, and that total betting on the Preakness card was $107.8 million, down 2.6 percent compared to last year’s card.
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