Racing enters a new era on November 4 when NBC-TV broadcasts the $13-million Breeders' Cup championship day from Churchill Downs. Beginning with that 4 1/2-hour broadcast, NBC will own the rights to Thoroughbred racing's best-known events-the Breeders' Cup and the Triple Crown.

NBC has broadcast the Breeders' Cup since the first championship day at Hollywood Park in 1984, and a year ago it purchased the rights to televise the Triple Crown through 2005 for a reported $51.5-million. ABC-TV had held telecast rights to the Triple Crown from 1986 through this year's series.

As one NBC official noted, the Triple Crown deal "really makes us the complete entity when it comes to the sport of Thoroughbred racing." For its part, NBC brings a commitment to sports-it owns the rights to the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship playoffs, the Olympics (although that venture was a ratings fiasco this year), and Wimbledon and the French Open tennis championships, to name several of its properties.

The network owned by General Electric Co. also offers a widely acclaimed ability to cross-promote those properties to achieve high ratings and maximum fan interest, choice viewer demographics for advertisers, and attractive sponsor packages to entice juicy corporate sponsorships.

For instance, the Triple Crown races this year will be shown before, between, or after major NBC telecasts such as NBA playoff games and the French Open, so the opportunities for attracting a new audience to the sport are significant.

NBC's prominence on the national scene will grow larger in 2001 with the anticipated demise of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association (NTRA) series for older horses on the Fox network. Fox has signed a new contract with Major League Baseball, and that commitment is expected to limit its racing broadcasts, as will Fox's new, eight-year deal with NASCAR.

Broadest audience

Racing again will be carried extensively on the ESPN and ESPN2 sports networks, both of which are owned by ABC, and racing has new television outlets such as the Television Games Network (TVG) and The Racing Network, which are tilted heavily toward the sport's gambling aspects. In addition, individual tracks have their own shows or cooperate with cable affiliates to produce racing programming.

All televised media make their contributions to promoting the sport, but cable networks and broadcasts lack the expansive reach of the broadcast networks even in an era of fragmented viewership. For the last 25 years, racing has yearned for a bigger network presence, and now its major-race air time mostly will be on NBC.

Thus, how the network performs in its racing shows and how it covers the sport will have a profound effect on the Thoroughbred industry through the middle of the decade. A lot is riding on the partnership of NBC and racing, and some members of the industry view television as a make-or-break medium for the sport.

"This is Custer's last stand for racing, and TV is a crucial part of it," said Nick Zito, 52, who has trained the winners of three Triple Crown races and one Breeders' Cup race. "The reason for racing's rebirth lately is not the economy or people with money who are fueling racing. It is promotion and marketing that have helped the sport to come back to where it is now. The most important thing is for TV to try to capture the glamour that took place when we were kids."

Many people within the sport and the television industry have strong ideas on what television should do or should not do to promote racing, and their ideas now will be focused on NBC, which certainly has ideas of its own on how to structure its shows.

Television and racing have had a stormy history, in part because the sport pushed away television in the 1950s (thinking it was harmful to live attendance) and paid the price with nearly a half-century of decline. Some of the decline was due to a paucity of television coverage, and also to blame were the sport's penchant for internecine wrangling and inattention to its fans.

"We're a generation or two behind," said Terry Meyocks, New York Racing Association president. "The more we can maximize our exposure, the better we'll do for racing."

Unique relationship

Television is unique among media because it owns a stake in an event or sport. Newspapers, magazines, and radio generally cover sports as news events; these media rise and fall on the overall quality of their products. Television networks in many ways stage the events that they cover. The TV entity and the sport will rise or fall together.

If the direction is upward, then other benefits accrue to both sport and broadcaster. The sport attracts sponsorships, and better ratings-the be-all and end-all of television-translate into higher advertising rates for the broadcaster.

NBC officials expect the synergy to translate into bigger numbers; network officials say that a one-point increase-approximately a million homes-is possible.

This year, the Kentucky Derby (G1) had a 6.6 overnight rating, about even with 1999, while the Preakness Stakes (G1) had a 4.6 rating (up from the prior year due to Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus), and the Belmont Stakes (G1) had a 3.4 overnight rating (down sharply because the field contained neither the Derby winner nor Preakness winner Red Bullet).

"I think an increase of one rating point would be huge, and I don't think it is that far-fetched. It could definitely happen," said Jon Miller, senior vice president of NBC Sports. "I think it's our job to drive that number; that's a big thing in what we can deliver.

"The lack of competition with the NBA, and the fact that we can use the NBA as an asset instead of an antagonist, if you will, will make a big difference. More people will know and learn about the Triple Crown and those races than have ever had a chance to do it before."

Certainly, racing's top officials are hoping that NBC drives interest in the sport.

"Dick Ebersol (NBC Sports chairman) is one of the most creative human beings I have ever met," said Tom Meeker, president of Churchill Downs Inc. and Triple Crown Productions, the company that markets the three races.

"NBC's distinguishing characteristic is that they have a belief in sports as a critical part of their image. This attracted me to them, right off. They continue to invest in it and understand how important sports are to their overall programming."

Competitive situation

Nor should anyone doubt that NBC will use its considerable expertise to drive the numbers. "I think we're all very competitive and take a tremendous amount of pride in our work. This is a very small business; everybody watches everybody else's product," Miller said.

"You're judged not only by the consumer and the advertiser and the industry, you're judged by your peers. You always strive to put on the best product that you can. There are going to be a lot of people watching our Triple Crown coverage next year and comparing it to what ABC Sports did, and it's going to be a very competitive situation."

The NTRA has utilized advertising and televised races to expand interest in the sport over the past 20 months, and its officials are hopeful that NBC's vast experience will benefit the sport.

"I think they (NBC) are among the very best at both pre-promoting and cross-promoting their properties," said NTRA Commissioner Tim Smith. "They have the potential-obviously, even more so if they end up retaining the Breeders' Cup rights beyond 2001 (see sidebar)-of being tremendously important, both in a narrow sense and a broad sense.

"In the narrow sense, I think the conventional wisdom-and I talked to someone from another network today-is that, all other things being equal, the Triple Crown ratings should improve by not being against the NBA but by being on the NBA (network).

"And in a