Sovereignty overtaking Journalism for the second time in five weeks did more than just inspire jokes on social media—it gave Fox a slight bump from last year’s historically low Belmont Stakes viewership.
An average audience of 3.83 million watched the head-to-head matchup on Fox and FS1 between the Kentucky Derby winner (Sovereignty) and the victor of the Preakness Stakes (Journalism). According to Fox, the telecast peaked at 5 million viewers between 7 and 7:15 p.m. ET, when the race itself was run.
Journalism was the favorite coming into the Belmont after his dominant Preakness race (which Sovereignty sat out of), while Sovereignty had 2-1 odds.
This year’s Belmont Stakes bettered last year’s TV audience by 5%. Just 3.66 million people watched Dornoch cruise to victory in 2024, the smallest non-COVID audience for the race in its history.
Saturday’s race was the third since Fox took the broadcasting reins from NBC in 2023.
The Belmont traditionally garners the lower ratings of the Triple Crown races so long as a horse is not in the running for the esteemed treble. Its best audiences over the past decade-plus were in 2015, when 18.6 million saw American Pharoah become the first Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978, and in 2018, when 12.7 million watched Justify controversially reach the pinnacle.
A competitive race between the favorites likely improved Fox’s fortunes, with Sovereignty returning to the track after skipping the Preakness in mid-May. Journalism came into the Kentucky Derby as the favorite but came up behind Sovereignty for second.
With the Derby winner on “load management” and no Triple Crown on the line, only 4.6 million watched Journalism’s epic comeback at the Preakness Stakes on NBC last month. That was a nearly 20% drop from 2024, when 5.5 million saw Seize the Grey end Mystik Dan’s Triple Crown hopes. It also barely surpassed the COVID-delayed 2020 event, which was run out of season in October and registered just 2.36 million viewers.
Although the Preakness didn’t perform well on the Nielsen meters, ad buyers may have been relatively unbothered. Most of the commercial space for the Preakness was sold before the Kentucky Derby, and the number of ad impressions held up well versus last year. Based on iSpot.tv data, the 2025 Preakness garnered 139.4 million ad impressions, just under 2% fewer impressions versus 141.8 million last year.
Whether that enthusiasm replicated itself at the Belmont remains to be seen. Ad impressions for the Belmont are typically the lowest of the three races, with the 2022 and 2023 races garnering over 63.2 million each. Impressions cratered in 2024 to 40.4 million.
For the second straight year, the Belmont Stakes was run in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., 200 miles north of the race’s usual home on Long Island, due to the construction of the new Belmont Park set to open in September 2026. Historically, the Belmont has been called “the Test of the Champion” as the race runs 1 1/2 miles, the longest dirt track in North America. Saratoga Race Course’s main track is 1 1/8 miles.
