VITEC clout to Churchill Downs Racetrack

Article posted by Coliseum, January 27^th, 2026

Image: Coliseum GSVA / Michael Rennschmied

Andy Wagner has spent 25 years working in the National Football League (NFL) as he says “My focus within VITEC at the time was in the collegiate market and little bit into NFL.”

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Andy Wagner is the Vice-President (VP) of Sales, Sports & Entertainment Venues for VITEC in the United States. Andy joined the VITEC team in 2019 and prior to that he has held multiple positions within collegiate and professional sports organizations.

In a conversation with ‘Coliseum’, Andy Wagner, VP Sales, Sports and Entertainment, VITEC, US, narrates how the legendary Churchill Downs Racetrack wanted to provide a premium experience in its new 2,000-person capacity indoor space, the First Turn Club, and how VITEC helped design an integrated scalable Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) and a state-of-the-art, dynamic video distribution solution.

Churchill Downs

The 1,65,000-capacity Churchill Downs is a horse racing complex in Louisville, Kentucky, United States that hosts the annual Kentucky Derby. It opened in 1875.

VITEC

VITEC is a market-leading, Paris-based provider of IPTV, video streaming and digital signage solutions specializing in hardware and software for encoding, decoding and managing IP video. They provide end-to-end solutions for industries like corporate, sports and Government including low-latency streaming and digital signage platforms.

Andy Wagner stated, “We had a very unique opportunity that opened up the Churchill Downs. It provided a great opportunity to us. We deployed the Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) platform at the 1,65,000-capacity Churchill Downs Racecourse in Louisville, Kentucky (US).”

He added, “The Kentucky Derby is truly a bucket list event and it is the most attended horse race in the United States and is part of the Triple Crown. The race draws an average attendance of over 150,000. In 2025, over 234 million dollars were wagered on the Kentucky Derby. The track gets over 200 million wagers on Derby Day and it is basically a whole week of racing for them. So, focus on the revival of technology is huge.”

Added Wagner, “So, for us, the first opportunity was with the Churchill Downs – First Turn Club. So, the first term provided an opportunity for Churchill’s information technology (IT) staff to kind of dip their toes into IPTV.”

It enabled VITEC to show Churchill Downs how a scalable, reliable, low-latency video distribution solution could be extended facility wide to over 5,000 displays.

“So, from a VITEC perspective we had the flexibility to kind of attack this on two fronts. We had the ability to attack it on the ENCODE side and then also on the DECODE side. Number of products to figure out how we could get these formats to know what the expectations were. So, we went with our NGW time and device and tested in over five locations throughout the track. None of them obviously was the actual location and the system was to be deployed up because that was under construction. They were all targeted areas where they saw IPTV expanding into the future. So, with the combination what we were able to accomplish on the ENCODE side and on the DECODE side we own the whole solution we were able to streamline that.”

“Most of the VITEC part was to be able to contribute remotely. It was extremely successful for us as far as what the system did and then it led into expansion for us. Over the last two years the system again started off with 150 displays and is now up to close to 700. Basically, every year that the Derby finishes the next construction project kicks in.”

Wrap up

Andy Wagner wrapped up by stating, “We are working already on two projects and we will be close to 1,000 displays. This project will be between 3,000 to 4,000 displays and it will become our largest IPTV deployment here in North America. It is a great event and from our standpoint this was really a unique case – the pitchside of it, to understand what our system can do through the proof of concept and then the final completion.”

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