20.1 million people watched the Kentucky Derby, the most since 1989

More people watched Saturday’s 150th running of the Kentucky Derby than any Derby in the last 35 years. 20.1 million viewers tuned into the race, the most ever for an NBC-broadcasted horserace. Back in 1989, 18.5 million people watched Sunday Silence win the race on ABC.

To be fair, 20.1 million was the peak, but the entire coverage still averaged 16.7 million sets of eyeballs. This number is up nine percent over last year. This rendition of the Derby also became the most-streamed Derby ever, with 714,000 viewers on Peacock, more than doubling last year’s numbers.

NBC must like what they see. They just agreed to an extension with the Derby which will have us watching the Run for the Roses on their channel until 2032.

The ratings for the Kentucky Derby continue to surprise me. Just for a comparison, here are the top-watched sports championships in the United States:

• Super Bowl: 123 million
• College Football Championship: 25 million
• Kentucky Derby: 20.1 million
• NCAA Men’s Basketball Final: 14.8 million
• NBA Finals: 11.6 million
• NCAA Women’s Basketball Final: 11 million
• World Series: 9.1 million
• NHL Finals: 2.6 million

It probably helps that the Kentucky Derby is only two minutes long and the rest of these events take hours if not multiple days to finish a series. Regardless, the Kentucky Derby is in pretty good company there.

Somewhere, Nick Roush is telling Bryan the Intern, “I told you so.”

TV watchers got the drama they were looking for with an absurdly close photo finish. Mystik Dan took home all the mystique from the race, with Sierra Leone and Forever Young just a nostril behind.

If, for some reason, you were not one of the 20.1 million people who watched the Derby live, here is the full race on YouTube, which, at the time of this writing, has 827,000 views.