LOUISVILLE — Nineteen point six million people watched the 152nd Kentucky Derby on average last May. That figure is the highest in more than a decade, and it translated into record wagering across Derby Week, which in turn helped Churchill Downs Incorporated produce the best three months in its history.
The company reported $980 million in net revenue for the second quarter of 2026, a 5 percent increase over the same period a year ago and the first time Churchill Downs has crossed that threshold. Adjusted EBITDA reached $477 million, also an all-time record, reflecting a 6 percent year-over-year improvement. Net income attributable to Churchill Downs shareholders rose 11 percent to $241 million. Diluted earnings per share reached $3.42, up 14 percent year-over-year. Churchill Downs filed the results in an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
The live and historical racing segment, which spans Churchill Downs Racetrack, the Kentucky Derby and Kentucky Oaks races, and the company’s network of historical racing machines installed at facilities across multiple states, generated $575 million in revenue for the quarter, a $34 million increase from a year ago, and $318 million in adjusted EBITDA, up $21 million. The gaming segment, covering the company’s regional casino properties, produced $270 million in revenue with $133 million in adjusted EBITDA. Wagering services and solutions, which includes the company’s online wagering platforms, contributed $178 million in revenue and $52 million in adjusted EBITDA, gains of $10 million and $4 million respectively.
Peak Derby viewership reached 24.4 million, a 12 percent increase from a year earlier. The company reported record all-sources wagering for both the Kentucky Derby and the Kentucky Oaks, describing Derby Week as making “record contributions” to the quarter’s results. Churchill Downs did not disclose a precise Derby-specific revenue figure, but the concentration of wagering dollars in a single week is the clearest driver of the quarterly record.
The numbers arrive at a divided moment for American gambling. Churchill Downs’ core assets, including a racetrack that opened in 1875, casino floors in states that licensed gaming years ago, and a pari-mutuel wagering technology operation, are setting records. The newer, louder parts of the industry are fighting at the state and federal level over their right to operate. BetMGM indefinitely delayed its $500 million annual profit target last week, citing prediction market competition as the primary pressure on its sportsbook revenue. A federal court in Minneapolis this week blocked Minnesota’s attempt to criminalize prediction market platforms, deepening a jurisdictional conflict that has kept online sportsbooks and event-contract operators in regulatory limbo across more than a dozen states.
None of that turbulence appears in Churchill Downs’ numbers. Historical racing machines, devices that pay out based on algorithmically replayed outcomes of historical races rather than live sports events, have expanded across Kentucky, Virginia, and a handful of other states without triggering the same regulatory fights that have accompanied online sports betting and prediction markets. The machines are classified as pari-mutuel wagering equipment rather than slot machines in most jurisdictions, a distinction that has allowed Churchill Downs to operate them in states where casino gambling remains prohibited. That regulatory edge is one reason the live and historical racing segment is the company’s largest by revenue and its most profitable by adjusted EBITDA margin.
Net bank leverage stood at 3.7 times at the end of the quarter. Churchill Downs provided no full-year financial guidance with Wednesday’s results, leaving the second-half picture open. Net bank leverage at 3.7 times is elevated by historical standards for a gaming company, and the absence of a forward outlook means investors are left to model the rest of 2026 without management’s own projections.
The Derby’s contribution also makes the quarterly numbers difficult to annualize. Churchill Downs generates a disproportionate share of its annual revenue in the weeks surrounding the Kentucky Derby, which falls in early May and anchors the second quarter. The third quarter, running through September, does not include a comparable event. Historical racing machine revenue continues through all four quarters, and the gaming and wagering segments provide a steadier base, but neither has the revenue-concentration effect of Derby Week. Whether the second quarter’s records represent the company’s underlying growth trajectory or the amplifying effect of an event that runs for one week out of every fifty-two is a question the results leave open.
Churchill Downs’ online wagering unit competes directly in the market that has drawn Kalshi and Polymarket into running court battles with state regulators. The wagering services and solutions segment’s $52 million in quarterly adjusted EBITDA is substantially smaller than the racing and casino businesses. The company has not addressed publicly how prediction market competition is affecting its own online wagering platform, in contrast to sportsbook operators like BetMGM, which has quantified the impact and delayed its profitability targets in response.
The Derby’s television audience tells a part of the story that the financial results do not fully capture. An 11 percent gain in average viewership and a 12 percent gain in peak viewership comes against a backdrop of broadly declining live-sports television audiences across most of the calendar. Major League Baseball and the NFL have both reported audience erosion in some broadcast windows, and the college sports media landscape is fragmenting across streaming platforms. The Kentucky Derby bucked that trend sharply, drawing its largest average audience in over a decade. That level of audience is the kind of number that attracts sponsorship dollars, wagering volume, and media interest in roughly that order, and each feeds back into Derby Week’s revenue.
What the numbers confirm is that the oldest corners of American gambling are not standing still. A 5 percent year-over-year revenue gain and an 11 percent jump in net income, at the scale of a $980 million quarter, is not the performance of a mature business in secular decline. Whether Churchill Downs can sustain that pace through the second half of 2026, without a major event anchoring the calendar, is the question the company did not answer Wednesday.
