The Kentucky Derby
Two Minutes. Everything on the Line.
Customer Story · Lumen Technologies
The Kentucky Derby lasts two minutes.
The pressure lasts all year.
I led a documentary-style customer story about how Lumen powers the Kentucky Derby — not the spectacle everyone sees, but the invisible systems that have to perform flawlessly when everything spikes at once.
The result was a film that translated massive operational complexity into human-scale storytelling — and delivered measurable commercial impact.
The Story
The Kentucky Derby isn’t just a race.
It’s a global system operating under zero tolerance for failure.
On Derby Day, Churchill Downs becomes a temporary city:
Broadcast to hundreds of millions
Wagering at historic scale
Food, security, surveillance, social, and media all peaking simultaneously
Every one of those systems depends on connectivity — and every one of them surges far beyond normal load.
Lumen provides the infrastructure that absorbs that spike:
from television broadcast and wagering systems
to on-site operations
to real-time security and surveillance
to the social posts fans never think twice about.
The story was about the months of quiet work that make “the fastest two minutes in sports” possible.
The Work
Our short documentary was anchored in access rather than spectacle.
Production unfolded across two seasons:
Initial story development during the Kentucky summer
Final filming in the dead of winter — including a 4AM shoot overlooking an empty Churchill Downs
At the center was Bill Vest, Chief Trainer at Churchill Downs — a human entry point into a system built on discipline, repetition, and trust.
The film revealed what viewers never see: the infrastructure, redundancy, and operational rigor required to stage the most famous race in the world.
The Process
Precision storytelling under real constraints:
Documentary access inside a live, high-security environment
Coordination across operations, security, broadcast, and executive stakeholders
Translation of deeply technical systems into clear, visual narrative
Creative decisions made to respect both the luxury of the brand and the seriousness of the operation.
This was operational precision, framed cinematically.
My Role
Creative Director & Director
Led story conception and narrative framing
Directed all on-location production
Oversaw post-production and collaborated on release strategy
Deployed and managed a 15-person in-house film studio
Partnered directly with senior leadership and the Derby organization
I approached the film the same way a trainer approaches the Derby:
prepare relentlessly so nothing breaks when it matters.
Impact
Event Scale
Most-watched Kentucky Derby since 1989
21.8M at-home viewers
Broadcast across 170 countries
$349M in wagering handle
25× bandwidth spike vs. a normal day
24/7 surveillance across 154 racehorses
Millions of dollars in physical assets protected
Sales Performance
502 Marketing Qualified Leads
377 Sales Qualified Leads
102 deals influenced ($75K port cost)
76 new Network-as-a-Service customers ($38K port cost)
50% offer take rate (excluding partner segment)
Port sales surpassed $100K for the first time — ~20% uplift vs. recent monthly average.
Why It Matters
The Derby proves a simple truth:
The biggest moments don’t reward improvisation.
They reward preparation.
This work showed how story can reveal operational mastery — making scale, resilience, and technical precision legible to customers, partners, and the market.
When everything spikes at once,
clarity becomes the advantage.