By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews — Maryland on the Map, Part 7
On Monday, Governor Wes Moore announced that Maryland had purchased Laurel Park for $48.5 million, acquiring the last piece of physical infrastructure for the state’s thoroughbred racing industry. It was framed as a triumph — smart, cost-effective, historic.
On Tuesday, Churchill Downs Incorporated announced it had purchased the intellectual property rights to the Preakness Stakes and the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes for $85 million. The name. The trademark. The brand. Everything that makes the Preakness the Preakness — sold to the company that owns the Kentucky Derby, effective after this year’s race.
Maryland was not the buyer.
The Governor’s office, asked for comment, issued a statement saying the Moore-Miller Administration looks forward to “engaging with Churchill Downs to learn more about this agreement.” Not a negotiated outcome. Not a strategic partnership announced jointly. A press release from Louisville that Maryland apparently read the same morning as everyone else.
The state has spent roughly $450 million in public money acquiring every barn, paddock, grandstand, and training facility in Maryland’s thoroughbred industry. It now pays an annual licensing fee to a Kentucky corporation for the right to use the name of its own race.
What Maryland Bought, and What It Didn’t
To understand why this matters, it helps to understand what intellectual property means in the context of a sporting event.
The Preakness Stakes trademark covers the name, the brand identity, and all associated commercial rights — merchandise, sponsorships, broadcast licensing, and the legal right to call a race the Preakness Stakes. Whoever owns that trademark controls the most valuable commercial asset attached to the event. The physical racetrack is infrastructure. The brand is the product.
Augusta National owns the Masters trademark. Churchill Downs has owned the Kentucky Derby trademark since its founding. When those events negotiate broadcast deals, sponsorship packages, and merchandise licensing, they negotiate as the owners of their brands. The economic value flows to them.
Maryland, after spending $450 million on racetracks, owns the infrastructure. Churchill Downs, after spending $85 million on the trademark, owns the product. Every broadcast rights negotiation, every major sponsorship deal, every licensing agreement attached to the Preakness name now runs through Louisville first.
The Leverage Problem
The annual licensing fee arrangement sounds reasonable on its face — Churchill Downs licenses the Preakness name back to Maryland, Maryland runs the race, everyone benefits from a healthy Preakness. That may well be how it plays out, at least initially.
But the leverage structure is permanently altered, and Maryland’s negotiating position in every future discussion about the Preakness has weakened significantly.
Churchill Downs now owns two of the three legs of the Triple Crown. Its CEO, Bill Carstanjen, said the acquisition is “consistent with our strategy of investing in premier Thoroughbred racing assets with long-term growth potential.” That is the language of a company that intends to monetize what it bought. The annual licensing fee will be renegotiated. The terms of the broadcast rights agreement — the Preakness’s current NBC deal expires after this year — will be negotiated with Churchill Downs holding the trademark. The scheduling debate over whether to move the Preakness back a week, which surfaced just days before this announcement, will now be resolved by a company whose primary interest is the Kentucky Derby calendar, not Maryland’s.
Maryland cannot walk away from these negotiations. It spent $400 million rebuilding a racetrack specifically to host the Preakness. It has no credible threat to run a different race. Churchill Downs knows this. The licensing fee will reflect it over time.
1/ST Racing’s Exit, Fully Executed
Belinda Stronach’s statement on Tuesday deserves to be read carefully. The sale of the Preakness intellectual property, she said, “closes our company’s Thoroughbred racing chapter in Maryland.”
That exit has now been executed with precision. 1/ST Racing donated Pimlico to the state — offloading a deteriorating asset that required hundreds of millions in capital investment. It sold Laurel to the state for $48.5 million — extracting cash value from a property the state needed for its own plan. And it sold the Preakness trademark to Churchill Downs for $85 million — capturing the full commercial value of the one asset in this transaction that was actually worth real money on the open market.
Maryland absorbed the liabilities. 1/ST Racing captured the value. Churchill Downs acquired the brand. The state is left holding the buildings and paying rent on the name.
What the Governor’s Statement Reveals
The Moore administration’s response is worth examining not for what it says but for what it implies.
“In the coming weeks, we look forward to engaging with Churchill Downs to learn more about this agreement, discuss opportunities for partnerships, and better understand their vision to grow this industry in Maryland.”
This is not the language of a government that was consulted, negotiated with, or even notified in advance. This is the language of a government that was surprised. Maryland committed $450 million to this industry and apparently had no right of first refusal on the most valuable intellectual property attached to it, no advance notice that the sale was coming, and no seat at the table when the deal was structured.
That raises a straightforward question that the Moore administration has not yet answered: at any point during the negotiations over Pimlico, Laurel, and the broader restructuring of Maryland racing, did the state have an opportunity to acquire the Preakness trademark itself — and if so, why didn’t it?
The trademark sold for $85 million. Maryland was already spending $450 million. The incremental cost of owning the brand outright would have been less than 20 percent of what the state was already committed to spending. Owning the Preakness name would have permanently secured Maryland’s position as the race’s home, eliminated the annual licensing obligation, and given the state full control over broadcast rights, sponsorships, and scheduling. Instead, Maryland owns the parking lot, and Churchill Downs owns the crown.
The Churchill Downs Angle
It is worth noting what Churchill Downs is signaling with this acquisition beyond Maryland’s borders. The company now controls the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes — two of the three legs of the Triple Crown. Sportico reported that a Churchill Downs spokesperson declined to comment when asked whether the company had interest in acquiring the Belmont Stakes, owned by the New York Racing Association.
That non-denial, in the context of an $85 million acquisition announced the day after Kentucky Derby week begins, is itself a story. A single private company controlling all three legs of the Triple Crown would represent an extraordinary concentration of power in American horse racing. Whether that is Churchill Downs’s ultimate ambition or not, Maryland has now handed them a path toward it — and done so without, apparently, understanding what it was agreeing to.
What Maryland Should Do Now
The deal has not yet closed — it finalizes after the 2026 Preakness on May 16. That means there is a narrow window, however unlikely it is to be used effectively, for Maryland to understand exactly what it agreed to and what protections, if any, exist in the licensing agreement.
Specifically, the General Assembly and the Governor’s office should demand full public disclosure of the licensing agreement terms before the Board of Public Works approves any further expenditures related to the Pimlico redevelopment. The annual fee amount, the escalation terms, the duration, and the conditions under which Churchill Downs could move the Preakness to a different venue are all material to Maryland’s $400 million investment. Taxpayers who funded that investment have a right to know whether the race it was built around can be relocated at a private company’s discretion.
The Moore administration may yet spin this as a positive development — Churchill Downs is a sophisticated operator with a strong incentive to grow the Preakness brand, and its involvement could accelerate the broadcast rights modernization and sponsorship growth that the race needs. That case can be made. But it should be made honestly, with full disclosure of the terms, not through a statement promising to engage with a company whose deal Maryland apparently just read about in a press release.
Maryland spent $450 million to own the horse racing industry. It turned out the most valuable thing in that industry wasn’t the horses or the tracks.
It was the name on the race. And Maryland doesn’t own it.
Maryland on the Map is an ongoing MDBayNews series on the state’s sporting economy and public investment in major events.
Sources: Churchill Downs Incorporated press release, April 21, 2026; Governor Wes Moore office statement via WMAR-2 News, April 21, 2026; Belinda Stronach/1/ST Racing statement, April 21, 2026; BloodHorse, April 21, 2026; Sportico, April 21, 2026; WTOP News, April 21, 2026; Maryland Stadium Authority; Governor Moore office press release (Laurel Park acquisition), April 20, 2026; Maryland Board of Public Works; prior MDBayNews Maryland on the Map series reporting.
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