NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Even though he lost his bid to be the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, Funny Cide is the best thing to happen to the business side of horse racing in a long time.

Not only has Funny Cide captured the imagination of fans outside of horse racing -- as a gelding he's poised to have a much longer racing career than any recent winner of the sport's top races. And for a troubled business that barely registers with most sports fans under 50, having a media star that actually continues to compete is about as common as a 300-pound jockey.

Funny Cide came in third in Saturday's 135th running of the Belmont Stakes, losing to Empire Maker, who had been the horse everyone expected to make a run at the Triple Crown before the Kentucky Derby was run. No horse has done it since Affirmed in 1978.

Funny Cide's victory in the Preakness won't be the last win he has for the sport that needs a star to hang around and build public support rather than retire to stud.

Most of the three-year old horses that find success in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness or the Belmont are quickly retired and sent out to stud to father the next generation of racing champions. Stud fees of $20,000 for every live foal produced are common and can climb as high as $500,000.

With a horse able to father up to 80 or 90 foals a year, stud fees dwarf what can be made on the track.

"One of the troubles with the racing industry: As soon as we have a superstar, he retires," said Robert Flynn, executive director of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association.

But Funny Cide was castrated early in his career due to a medical condition. Since there are no stud fees in his future, his owners plan to race him for years to come.

"You never know -- one bad step could be his last step," said David Mahan, one of Funny Cide's principal owners. "But he's very sound, so we're hoping we get three, four or five years out of him."

Mahan said there's a very profitable career possible for their famous gelding.

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"Having him as a race horse doesn't bother us a bit," he said. "There's all types of good size races, million dollar races, for him down the road. And we're horsemen. We want to see people get excited about racing. If he was a colt and he won a Triple Crown race, he'd go to a breeder's shed and you would never see him again."

Mahan and his partners had already made a nice profit on their $75,000 purchase -- an incredible bargain by thoroughbred standards. A series of wins and high finishes in other races had brought them almost $500,000 in purses even before they reached Churchill Downs.

Still, even if Funny Cide had won the $7 million that the Triple Crown might have brought, it's unlikely his winnings would ever have matched what would have been possible from stud fees, said horse racing consultant Reynolds Bell Jr.

But Mahan, Bell and others in the industry say that it's also possible that Funny Cide would not have had his success on the track if he hadn't been a gelding. And terrific stud fees are not certain even for great horses.

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War Emblem, which won the first two legs of the Triple Crown last year, was sold for $18 million, but breeders have so far not been able to get him to mate with any mares. Cigar, horse racing's top money winner of all time, was found to be infertile once his racing career was over.

Four other times since 1997 the Belmont was run with a horse having a chance for the Triple Crown, but never with the attention already being lavished on Funny Cide.

The horse's rags-to-riches story has grabbed the public's fancy the way no other horse in recent memory has. Mahan, a caterer who was preparing for four different weddings the weekend before the race, and his partners are all of relatively modest means who have hit it big with a small investment. They still travel to the races in rented school buses rather than the corporate jets of other horse owners.

"This horse has captured the imagination of both racing fans and sports fans," said Dan Liebman, executive editor of the industry's trade publication, The Blood-Horse. "So many people outside racing are excited, so that excites us."