Golden Tempo Wins 152nd Kentucky Derby, Record 19.6M Viewers

Golden Tempo rallied from 12th place to win the 152nd Kentucky Derby by a neck over Renegade on Saturday at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, drawing a record average audience of 19.6 million viewers on NBC and Peacock.

Jockey Jose Ortiz guided the colt around the final turn in the 1 1/4-mile race, which had a post time of 7:03 p.m. EDT. The victory marked the first Kentucky Derby win for trainer Cherie DeVaux, making her the first woman to train a winner in the Run for the Roses. Viewership peaked at 24.4 million from 7:15 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. EDT, according to preliminary Nielsen data and Adobe Analytics, surpassing the previous high for an NBC Sports presentation.

The audience marked an 11 percent increase from last year's 17.7 million and was the largest for the Derby since Sunday Silence's 1989 victory averaged 18.5 million viewers. NBC attributed part of the growth to its Big Data Panel methodology, implemented last September. Streaming on Peacock reached an average minute audience of 1.3 million, up 36 percent from 2025 and nearly double the 714,000 from 2024.

Friday night's Kentucky Oaks, run for the first time in primetime on network television, averaged a record 2.4...