Attendance at the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore was up 12 percent over last year, but overnight television ratings were down 6 percent as NBC earned a 6.0 from Nielsen for the 45-minute race portion of Saturday’s broadcast, marking the lowest overnight rating for the Preakness since 2000.
Shackleford beat Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom by a half length in the race. For the entire broadcast on NBC from 5:00-6:45pm, the network earned a 4.6 overnight rating, flat compared to last year.
A crowd of 107,398 people attended this year’s 136th Preakness, the sixth-largest crowd in the history of the event.
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