Looking ahead

Vice president of the AAP, Carlos Behety, explains how the Association has a clear vision and role to develop polo, including a simple strategy to facilitate more international players competing in high-goal polo

ILLUSTRATION: PETER JAMES FIELD

The Argentine Polo Association (AAP) has a clear vision to develop the sport. The strategic plan is quite simple: develop the sport as well as the industry that surrounds it. As in any other sport, the institution that represents the sport has the mission and responsibility to lead development. So, we have created a plan based on five pillars – players, fans, sponsors, safety and fun – and we have a strategy for each of them.

Players To develop the number of players we need, we have to think about it like an acquisition process of a client to a brand or product. What are the barriers of entry? How can we make it more approachable? How can we help people to get to know the sport and try it? It is a matter of awareness and trials. More clubs, more tournaments, more categories, and good segmentation will lead to a greater number of players, and more players means a bigger industry. Segmentation is key. Kids, female, amateur, pro-am, low-, medium-, and high-handicap tournaments in each category will mean greater involvement at each level and segment.

Fans and spectators We have a fascinating but quite unknown sport compared with more mainstream sports. It is hard to enjoy a sport that you don’t relate to, you don’t understand and is not in the media. We know the challenge is to make polo more visible, more approachable and closer to people. We have the best-loved animal in the world, the horse, and everyone relates to horses, yet not so much with polo. We need to rebuild that connection and reposition polo as an extreme sport played with the most-admired animal on the planet. We also need to help people understand the sport, the rules and improve the spectacle to make it more enjoyable during the live event, as well as generate a marketing strategy to ensure we are constantly reaching new audiences.

Sponsors In this area, the challenge has been twofold: corporate and personal sponsors. Polo is funded as a pro-am sport and is only fully pro in the Triple Crown in Argentina. We visualise the Triple Crown as a global event and in that sense we have been working to leverage the global expansion of the sport.

Right: 1991 Interscholastic Champions (from left): Marcos Di Paola, Delfin Uranga, Javier Novillo Astrada and Carlos Menendez Behety

We more than tripled corporate sponsorship in recent years to fund the growth to ensure we can keep fostering the professionalisation of the teams and to ensure we get adequate global partners and sponsors. I believe we are just starting to tap the full potential, but we are not even close. We need to learn from F1, NBA and FIFA and keep challenging our plans to carry on seeking new breakthroughs in the industry.

Safety This is key in all aspects of polo, so there are plans on all fronts, including rules, new equipment, referees and working conditions, etc. We are pushing strong communication to elevate the level of consciousness of players and the industry as a whole to drive the agenda of safety.

Fun Polo is a complex sport and it is key to understand it. The entertainment industry and fun are critical to feed the virtuous cycle outlined above.

It is the role of the relevant associations of each country to develop the plans, the metrics, and staff to execute their aims with excellence. In Argentina we have a leading role in the world, and we have had to step up the teams, mark out a strategic plan and align the stakeholders to ensure all our energy and effort have a common vision.

We lead an industry that employs more than 30,000 people and it is our duty to ensure we generate the conditions to foster the growth of all of them.

As part of this, we have a road map to include more international players in the Triple Crown and to get more players to

WE LEAD AN INDUSTRY THAT EMPLOYS OVER 30,000 PEOPLE AND IT IS OUR DUTY TO ENSURE WE FOSTER THE GROWTH OF ALL OF THEM

seven goals and above. To achieve this, we need to work with other associations, as it is not good to be alone. We want the world to compete, and we want to have more countries and nationalities in high-goal polo to increase the talent pool. It will take time, but it can be done.

The AAP started 100 years ago and had only a few local players, as England dominated the sport. Now in Argentina we have more than 4,000 players, yet only two per cent of them are above seven goals. Exposing high-potential players to higher goal competitions is key, so we will work with the HPA, USPA and many other associations to facilitate the exchange of players, and we will have a menu of tournaments that players from other countries can participate in. The business model of how to professionalise the sport is constantly evolving and we are aware the only way to grow is to develop the sport as a global platform.

At the AAP, we want to share our knowledge of polo with the rest of the world, so we created Polo University to ensure all our cumulative knowledge of the sport becomes available everywhere. Prior to this, most expertise was scattered and spread mainly by word of mouth. Polo University can be a step change in the sharing of best practice and knowledge. We’ll try to accelerate exchanges via Polo University to ensure we produce more high-performance players and 10 goalers.

We can also look at helping to develop high-performance programmes to bring people to Argentina, so they stay and train here and improve. There are also many high-level tournaments in Argentina to take part in, such as the Cámara and the Argentine high-goal season. But that would need to be in collaboration with the HPA or the USPA, or local organisations, so we can be enablers to help promising players from all around the world improve as fast as they can.