Fox Sports to televise Belmont Stakes starting in 2023
Fox Sports, the television network that has dramatically expanded live coverage of horse racing over the past five years through a partnership with the New York Racing Association, has secured the rights to broadcast NYRA’s Belmont Stakes, the third leg of the Triple Crown, beginning next year, according to NYRA and the network.
The agreement, which will run for eight years beginning in 2023, will place the three races of the Triple Crown on two different networks for the first time since 2010, the last year of a five-year deal NYRA had with ABC for the Belmont rights. NBC currently holds the rights to both the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness through long-term deals, and it has broadcast all three races of the Triple Crown since 2011.
The deal includes the stakes-heavy lineup of race days prior to the Belmont Stakes, according to the parties. It also will grant NYRA Bets, the account-wagering operation co-owned by NYRA and Fox Sports, the title sponsorship of the Belmont Stakes, the parties said.
The Belmont is a make-or-break TV property, with its ratings and viewership highly dependent on whether a horse is eligible to win the Triple Crown going into the race. While ratings for a non-Triple Crown Belmont are typically in the low single digits, a Triple Crown attempt can boost the ratings to nearly the size of the Kentucky Derby, racing’s single most consistent and valuable television property.
Last year, Fox Sports and NYRA extended a previous agreement securing the exclusive rights to daily racing at Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course through 2030. Fox Sports also exercised an option to buy a 25 percent equity interest in NYRA Bets, which has grown rapidly in the past two years. The deal gave the network an option to buy an additional 25 percent of the company.
Fox Sports and NYRA first began collaborating on racing broadcasts in 2016 with weekend shows focusing on races at Saratoga, NYRA’s most popular track. The relationship between the two parties has only strengthened in the past five years.
In 2020, Fox Sports broadcast more than 700 hours of daily live racing, in part to capitalize on the impacts of the pandemic, which spurred rapid growth in account-wagering handle on horse racing across the country. Fox Sports also has been aggressively marketing its own sports-betting partnerships at a time when that industry is exploding in popularity across the United States.
“From Secretariat to American Pharoah, the Belmont Stakes has been racing’s greatest test of a champion, and we couldn’t be prouder to bring it to Fox Sports,” said Michael Mulvihill, executive vice president of strategy and analytics at Fox Sports. “The Belmont enhances Fox’s status as the industry leader in live events and is an important step in our evolution as a media and gaming brand.”