On Monday, the fledgling National Thoroughbred League (NTL) announced that Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson had signed on as a lead owner of the expansion Maryland Colts, who will participate in the Nashville Cup at Kentucky Downs this coming Saturday and Sunday.
In short, the NTL brings a team concept to the sport of horse racing. Each Cup features five races, with each of 10 teams nominating a horse for each race, where points and prize money will be accrued. Teams will draft horses to their rosters on Tuesday, Aug. 27, and any owner can nominate a horse to participate in a Cup race at any time, an NTL spokesperson told Action Network.
While last year’s inaugural season featured five Cup weekends, this year’s has been scaled back to three, with Philadelphia owner Julius “Dr. J” Erving hosting “October-Fast” at Philadelphia’s Parx racecourse on Oct. 18 and 19 and Turf Paradise in Phoenix hosting Championship Fiesta Weekend on Dec. 29 and 30. Tanya Tucker, the country music legend who is part-owner of the NTL’s Nashville franchise, will host this weekend’s proceedings across the state line in Kentucky, with performances by up-and-coming musicians and more than $2 million in purse money.
Jackson’s Maryland franchise is among four expansion teams. The Colts are joined by teams in Miami, Phoenix and San Francisco in that regard, with franchises already in place in Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York, Nashville, Philadelphia and Seattle.
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Jackson is just the latest celebrity to get involved with the NTL, which was co-founded by Forbes’ chief content officer, Randall Lane. Along with Erving and Tucker, the rappers Nelly and Rick Ross also have ownership stakes in teams, as does New YorkGiants linebacker Kayvon Thibodeaux.
In announcing Jackson’s participation, the NTL also revealed that a 2025 Cup race would be held at Baltimore’s Pimlico Race Course, home of the Preakness States. Additionally, the NTL announced that Jackson will launch a program to expose less-privileged children to horse racing, an endeavor that will include an apprentice program where participants will work under the tutelage of one of the sport’s winningest trainers, Chad Brown.
“Walk a race track with Lamar Jackson and you’ll immediately understand his capacity to captivate an audience,” said Lane, who attended this year’s Preakness Stakes with Jackson, in a press release. “And it’s that intimate connection and adrenaline that aligns so well with the underlying premise of the National Thoroughbred League. Our league exists to both honor the tradition of one of America’s oldest spectator sports, but also to embed another level of excitement into the sport so that it engages a broad audience and provides them with an exceptional experience.”
As Horse Racing Nation noted when the NTL launched last year, the upstart league is similar to team-based horse racing enterprises in Australia and the U.K., as well as World Team Tennis, cricket’s Big Bash League and LIV Golf.
