The Rise of Polo Consultancies
- 1 day ago
- 11 min read
Updated: 3 hours ago
Historically, polo players focused solely on their performance on the ground. Over time, their roles expanded into horse trading, team management, and coaching, ultimately evolving into consultancy. Today, the ecosystem features advisers guiding third-party projects and offering services regarding polo-related developments, prompting questions about whether sufficient capital exists to absorb this supply, and how competent these individuals can be in fields as distant as property, biotechnology, club management, or legal matters.
This shift contrasts with the sector's informality, where contracts were historically agreed verbally at the pony lines. Generally, a polo manager possessed credentials to cover the entire spectrum of an industry in which, in many aspects, they lacked expertise. Structurally, the sport relies on the patron, who provides the capital and business vision. Polo was the last among the major equestrian sports to professionalise.
Despite attempts to avoid collapsing under its own weight, it struggles to take off and navigate the system, remaining unable to escape its dependency on the patron as the sole source of capital.
Globally, as many as 500 individuals offer direct advisory services in hubs such as Palm Beach, Sotogrande, England, and Argentina. This is a high figure for a niche sport like polo, with 100 advisers emerging in the last year alone.
For Orchid Bertelsen, an analyst and strategic adviser in the equestrian industry, the underlying issue lies in the other side of the counter. “Many buyers in this industry are hiring professional services for the first time, so they cannot distinguish a track record from a title, and they do not know which questions would reveal the difference. That is why cronyism persists: it is not just cultural preference, it is a substitute for the diligence the buyer does not know how to run. Hiring the friend of a friend feels safer than evaluating a stranger's claims you have no tools to test”, she explains from Detroit.
Bertelsen frames the consultancy boom not as a supply issue or a surplus of titled individuals, but rather as a demand issue within a market that cannot yet value the difference: “The industry does not just need better consultants. It needs more sophisticated buyers of consulting, and that only happens when the credible professionals explain publicly what good looks like and welcome being measured against it”.
Corporate Capital and Market Dynamics
One of the major structural trends is that external capital is professionalising the industry from the top down. Private equity now owns a significant share of the equestrian brand landscape, and sports are increasingly organised around broadcasting rights, infrastructure, or betting. In the US retail market, the story is not so much about consolidation, but rather the entry of foreign companies: in racing, the largest domestic specialist retailer collapsed, and the response came from abroad; meanwhile in show jumping, the sector has organised around luxury sponsorships. Polo remains the least institutionalised of the three, largely surviving as a club and patron economy. That is precisely why this consultancy boom is occurring: informal economies attract intermediaries.
In the broader equestrian sector, the US equine industry generates approximately US$ 177 billion, supporting around 6,000 strategy professionals globally. If intermediaries are removed, a corporate core of 500 individuals remains, advising major global players.
Racing leads the market, followed by the show jumping industry.
The market distinguishes two roles: the Equestrian Adviser, who directs long-term strategy, and the Equine Consultant, who optimises the profitability of equestrian and tourist centres.
In the polo world, the figure of the Polo Adviser or Polo Consulting agencies exists, but they form an extremely small guild compared to other equestrian disciplines. It is a highly exclusive and specialised sports niche. To understand how many advisers operate in the market, one must first look at the scale of the sport itself. According to the latest industry data, there are approximately 24,000 registered players worldwide—many of them amateurs—and around 1,150 polo clubs spread across some 90 countries, with a strong concentration in Argentina, the US, and the UK.
While influencers and content creators in polo seek to provide communication services, competing for a smaller share of the economic pie, the main financial volume is concentrated in strategic consultancy, especially regarding large-scale property projects. Specialised advice for new equestrian complexes and the optimisation of existing infrastructure constitute a high-value global market.
Athletes Transitioning into Business
In this field, sports figures have turned to driving institutional and residential investments, offering services in other areas based on their years of polo experience. This business model, integrating elite athletes with the property sector, has set precedents across Latin America. Ignacio Figueras led the residential development of The Polo Houses within the Las Piedras Fasano complex in Punta del Este, Uruguay, while also overseeing the design of its polo ground. Similarly, Facundo Pieres acted as a Polo Adviser for La Providencia Resort & Country Club in Buenos Aires, supervising the design of its sports sector. Hilario Ulloa founded and developed La Hache Polo Club in Argentina, establishing a private, centralised organisation built upon his experience on the elite circuit over two decades.
Advising off the field is yet another role for the Stirling family, a polo dynasty drawing on over a century of heritage to deliver strategy and advisory services for new equestrian ventures under the Stirling Polo brand.
Manu Cereceda, who co-founded Minuto Siete in 2008—one of the leading global polo agencies providing a professional operational structure to clubs worldwide—maintains that simply being an advisor is insufficient. The key is to be a direct operator; executing is better than advising.
“We operate, we don’t advise. Advice is cheap to copy; execution is not. We have six areas built for exactly that: Club Management, Team Management, Horse Management, Polo School, Player Agent and Polo Tournaments. A club can take one or all six,” states the agency's CEO.
The overall dynamic extends to global markets. JP BrandPlus, for instance, an independent strategic advisory firm based in Kentucky, serves founders, executives, and investors across the global equestrian industry.
Examples of qualified professionals abound, but not all have built a reputation on academic credentials or expertise forged on the polo ground.
New entrants with shorter track records are emerging in the market out of necessity. A source linked to the Argentine Polo Association notes that many players find it difficult to secure new patrons; consequently, they leverage their existing experience in the sport to market themselves as advisers or consultants. In Argentina, this multi-role approach is common practice, reflecting a broader national trend where informal employment reached 44.2% of the working population, according to the latest INDEC data for the first quarter of 2026.
"The line between advising or consulting and delegating work is a fine one; it can perhaps be perceived as a threat to the manager's position or to whoever is in direct contact with the patron. This scenario leads to the emergence of gurus promising to solve everything, but the truth is that the key lies in assembling a multidisciplinary team of experts across various fields and knowing how to manage them," the source added.
This reality contrasts with the Anglo-American markets, which demand strict academic credentials.
For Bertelsen, the dividing line is who owns the decision. A manager holds operational authority and bears responsibility for day-to-day results: horses, staff, seasons, and budgets. A consultant operates within a defined scope: a specific problem, a deliverable product, and a set completion date. Meanwhile, an adviser provides expert judgment to guide a third party's decision, evaluating industry-wide patterns without holding operational authority.
“The confusion arises when one person tries to be all three at once, because each role has a different accountability structure. If the person advising you also executes the plan and controls the budget, that is a manager, whatever the title on the invoice says. And a manager grading their own work is not an adviser. The value of the advisory role is exactly its distance from execution: you can tell the client the truth because you are not defending your own fiefdom”, she asserts.
According to a LinkedIn survey analysed via PhantomBuster software, there are around 900 profiles registered offering polo consultancy or advisory services.
This occurs in a market with only a few hundred individuals worldwide dedicated exclusively to polo advisory and consultancy across all facets of the sport. A large portion of these consultants are former professional players, veterinarians specialising in sports equines, or elite breeders (mainly in Argentina) who have transitioned into the business side of the industry.
A source embedded in California’s equestrian business sector and a member of the US Polo Association (USPA) maintains that polo “is a circle where everyone knows each other, based almost entirely on reputation, contacts, and direct experience on high-handicap grounds.”
"The sport is so improvised that no one will ever delegate anything to a professional who risks the manager's prestige or direct contact with a patron, because good opportunities in polo are very scarce and everything is projected to survive today, and tomorrow we see how to continue", the executive details.
Along these lines, Bertelsen notes that in an informal industry, trust is the currency, and the traditional way to earn it is proximity: spending years inside the right clubs cultivating the appropriate relationships. However, she warns: “I would argue for verification instead, and the right form of verification depends on what you are selling. An analyst's proof is published work: analysis in public, primary sources cited, numbers you can check. An advisor's or consultant's proof is implemented change: the company they worked with, what was different after they left, with numbers attached and someone on the inside willing to confirm it. Ask what changed inside the business after they left. If the answer is a deck, keep looking”.
For a member of the Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA) in England, these advisers are individuals linked to the sector who contribute via personal contacts or polo experience, rather than relevant academic degrees. "Ultimately, most polo developments or projects are directed by patrons and their trusted polo manager as the executing hand for everything, even if they are sometimes not the most prepared", they point out.
Emerging Markets and Global Expansion
For polo, the Middle East represents a breath of fresh air in a stale industry. The region has become increasingly professionalised, attracting substantial investments linked to the polo world and equestrian development. Analysts cite stagnation in the European and American markets, projecting that in the coming years, this part of the world, alongside India, will begin to shape a new era for projects.
To satisfy demand in that sector, Polo Saudi was recently launched. Led by industry expert Kate Finlay, the organisation, based in Sotogrande, aims to guide new developments and provide sports advisory services in Saudi Arabia.
Operational and financial support sustains this network through agencies and former players specialising in infrastructure planning, concentrated primarily in Argentina, the US, and the UK. United POLO, operating in Qatar and England, focuses on strategic planning and facility operations, observing that project advice is driven by clients requiring international-standard infrastructure to complete their commercial offering.
The German firm Equine Consulting reports a significant increase in requests from local clients seeking legal and strategic advice for polo-related developments last year.
Meanwhile, the independent consultancy CMC&CO structures capital for new developments in the Middle East. Furthermore, La Dolfina collaborates with a multidisciplinary team advising on polo development in Saudi Arabia: Adolfo Cambiaso leads a team covering the business from a 360-degree approach, spanning property and fashion to gastronomy.
But being an adviser or consultant requires more than merely being a former polo player.
The industry involves complexities far beyond hitting the ball, demanding long-term strategies.
A much broader strategic vision is required—one that moves past the assumption that selling horses and creating professionals alone will guarantee polo's survival. It is a discipline where the gap between attention and access is vast. The defining strategic question for the next five years is conversion.
According to Bertelsen: “The sport has more cultural attention than it has had in decades, and declining participation economics underneath it. Whoever builds the bridges between those two layers wins. That means watching where the brand and rights money concentrates, watching which disciplines create genuinely new on-ramps for audiences and riders rather than just raising prices on the existing base, and watching who owns customer data”.
For the expert, the largest innovation gap lies not in marketing, but in information. “Most equestrian businesses, across all disciplines, cannot answer basic questions about who their customers are, what they are worth over time, or why they leave. The businesses that professionalise that layer first will compound advantages the rest cannot see”, she maintains.
Culturally, horses are experiencing a peak and brands are turning towards equestrian imagery; the sport has never had so much attention. However, this attention concentrates on the brand layer, the part that can be packaged, broadcast, and worn.
The underlying ecosystem, which actually produces and sustains horses and riders, is facing pressure from all sides: participation costs continue to rise, the existing base is ageing or being priced out, and the next generation is not arriving fast enough to replace them.
Bertelsen notes that what is growing is the spectacle. “The disparity between disciplines comes down to one question: which ones have built accessible on-ramps for new participants and fans, and which ones only offer expensive participation as the entry point. Polo has more cultural attention per participant than any discipline in the sport, and arguably the narrowest on-ramp. That gap is the whole story”, she asserts.
Genetics, Science, and the Polo Manager's Ceiling
The landscape varies according to the equestrian discipline. In the horse racing world, a highly regulated sector, fewer than 150 experts dominate 80% of thoroughbred sales through genetic and physical analysis. In show jumping and dressage, scouts connect European supply with amateur riders through co-ownership or leasing, operating on a flipping model: they acquire prospects, develop them, and resell them at higher valuations.
Professional polo has a unique structure: the patron (an amateur with high purchasing power) finances a team and hires professional players. This is where the polo manager enters the equation, managing tasks that range from buying and selling polo ponies and overseeing teams and clubs, to developing the infrastructure for specialised grounds, which requires precise agronomic engineering.
GVS EQ, a global consultancy firm based in London, notes that polo is a complex business, involving everything from horses, clubs, and property to staffing and international logistics. "It is normal that when making a large move, those responsible seek a suitable and trusted opinion, but the drawback arises because, not being a regulated profession, trust is the only existing credential," they maintain.
At this point, the polo manager hits an operational limit and stagnates. Daily management of an equine organisation must not be confused with directing projects that demand rigorous technical knowledge.
In matters of legal advice and consultancy in polo, the situation changes. This is where the highest fees are commanded by key specialists, such as equine lawyers managing fractional ownership contracts or architects designing horse-centric facilities.
In polo, advisory reaches its peak sophistication in genetics and logistics. Following Adolfo Cambiaso's cloning of the mare Cuartetera—whose clone sold for a record US$ 800,000—and the subsequent cost reduction to US$ 40,000 per replica in US and Argentine laboratories, the adviser's role shifted decisively towards scientific strategy.
By analysing the catalogues of the Argentine Polo Horse Breeders Association, consultants design asset portfolios for investors.
Currently, patrons purchase the rights to clone the winning genetics of the Palermo Open, sending replicas to the field while keeping others as broodmares to commercialise embryos.
A former patron and US Open participant notes that polo is technologically advanced in genetics, with advisers transitioning from traditional experts or gauchos to laboratory strategists. With top-tier Triple Crown horses costing at least US$ 100,000, investment decisions require strict statistical precision.
The professional polo economy operates almost inversely to that of most traditional team sports. It does not involve franchises generating multimillion-dollar revenues from broadcasting rights or ticket sales; instead, high-level polo is largely sustained by private patronage.
Recommendation experts emerge everywhere, while a new doubt arises regarding a sport increasingly in decline due to failing to find commercial viability, and shunned by mass success given the absence of major brand arrivals. Time will tell whether there is enough demand to sustain everyone, or if it is merely a bubble or passing trend.
