Preakness Payouts and Purses

Key Takeaways:

• Payouts have been better recently, and 6 of the last 8 winners have been double-digit payouts, including Seize the Grey at $21.60.
• Exacta bets can be worth a lot of money, even with favorites winning. In 2019, the Exacta was $947; and in 2002, the Exacta was $327.
• The highest payout in Preakness history was for Master Derby in 1975 at $48.80; however, favorites continue to win nearly 50% of the time.
• The purse for the Preakness Stakes in 2024 was $2 million, with $1.2 million going to the winner.

The Preakness Stakes happens at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland, on the third Saturday in May: two weeks after the Kentucky Derby, and three weeks before the Belmont Stakes. The race covers 1 3/16 miles on the dirt: the shortest of the Triple Crown races, though longer than many of the competitors will ever run again.

It is one of the most important races of the year and one of the most demanding, for handicappers and horses alike. And, of course, that means the middle jewel of the Triple Crown is a big-money race, both for the bettors and the horseplayers who are going to the windows.

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Preakness Stakes Betting Payouts

Though the Preakness has a reputation for being friendly to favorites, long shots can still win the second jewel of the Triple Crown. Just last year, Seize the Grey won at odds of almost 10-1. Coming out of the Pat Day Mile (G2), a race on the undercard of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, Seize the Grey was the third-longest shot in the eight-horse field. He skipped right over the mud in Baltimore, leading at every call and upsetting Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan. Anyone who backed Seize the Grey in the 2024 Preakness Stakes was rewarded to the tune of $21.60.

Recent Preakness Stakes Payout Trends

Through most of the 2000s, the signature race at Pimlico Race Course came back quite chalky, with only two horses paying double digits between 2000 and 2009: Red Bullet and Bernardini. However, in recent years, the race has become more lucrative from a betting perspective. In the last eight years, six horses have paid double digits, with four of them paying over $20 to win.

It makes sense: with a trend away from Kentucky Derby competitors winning the Preakness, and the proverbial “new shooters” becoming more important, the winners are less familiar to casual bettors. Many of these recent pricey winners made sense from a handicapping perspective: Cloud Computing and Early Voting were later bloomers being brought along more gradually by Chad Brown, Rombauer earned his bid in the El Camino Real Derby and got a well-intended prep in the Blue Grass, and even Seize the Grey was an in-form horse stretching out for D. Wayne Lukas, the most successful Preakness trainer of all time.

Recent Preakness Stakes Win Payouts

These are the payouts for Preakness winners since 2000:

Preakness Stakes Exacta Payouts

Even when a favorite wins the Preakness Stakes, a great way to cash a bigger ticket is to play an exotic. If there is a favorite or second-favorite who you think is the goods, a great way to make money in the Preakness can be to key them with others you think have a shot.

This can even pay big with an obvious horse like a Kentucky Derby winner on the win end. For example, Derby winner War Emblem over long shot Magic Weisner paid $327.00 for a $2 exacta in 2002. In 2015, the exacta of odds-on American Pharoah over Tale of Verve still paid $124.40 despite the winner’s short price.

These are the exacta finishers and payouts in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course since the year 2000:

Highest Preakness Stakes Payouts

Though there has never been a triple-digit winner like Donerail or Rich Strike in the Kentucky Derby or like Sarava or Sherluck in the Belmont Stakes, there are still some big prices who have won the second jewel of the Triple Crown.

These are the ten longest shots to win the Preakness Stakes:

Heaviest Favorites to Win the Preakness

Out of 150 editions of the Preakness Stakes—including two divisions in 1918—73 favorites have won, meaning favorites win almost half the time. Odds-on favorites have done well, but haven’t been can’t-miss bets: 28 horses have started at odds of less than even money, with 18 of these odds-on favorites winning.

These are the ten shortest-priced winners of the Preakness Stakes:

Unsurprisingly, eventual Triple Crown winners tend to go off at very short prices in the Preakness Stakes. Seven of the ten shortest-priced visitors to the winners’ circle swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes.

Preakness Stakes Purses

Of course, the money in the Preakness Stakes does not only come at the betting windows. If you’re lucky enough to own a horse good enough to race at the top level of horse racing, the spoils are rich: the purse for the second jewel of the Triple Crown sits at a cool $2 million. $1.2 million of that sum goes to the winner with $400,000 to the runner-up, $220,000 for third place, $120,000 for fourth, and $60,000 for fifth. Just as with the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, there is no purse paid to horses who finish below fifth place.

The purse has skyrocketed since the first Preakness, all the way back in 1873, which offered a purse of $2,050 in a race named after the horse who won the Dinner Party Stakes at the racetrack’s opening earlier that year. The purse for the Preakness has been in seven-figure territory since 1998. Its current $2 million purse has been in place since 2024.

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