Chapter 04 of 15 · about 12 min read · updated October 2026

04The polo club

You pay a lot of money every year to hang out at a polo club. In 2026, a general admission pass for the first weekend cost $649.⁹² And the polo club stopped playing polo.

On October 27, 2021, Goldenvoice announced it was taking over Empire Polo Club year-round.¹⁴ Some of the club's staff had been told the day before that they were being laid off, with three days' notice.⁷³ "These people gave over 30 years of their employment - of their life," one of them told KESQ.⁷³ By November it was official: polo would stop at Empire.⁹³

Palm Springs Life now puts it flatly: polo is no longer played at Empire Polo Club.⁹ The name stayed. The horses moved next door.

This chapter explains the game you are standing on, the club that played it, and what the grounds do for the rest of the year.

How polo works

Polo is hockey on horseback with a safety system built around a single imaginary line. Here is enough to follow a match, or to play the game at the end of this chapter.

The field

An outdoor polo field is 300 by 160 yards, about nine American football fields.⁹⁴ The goals sit at each end, 8 yards apart, with no crossbar, so a ball that goes between the posts at any height counts.⁹⁵⁹⁶ Low sideboards, no taller than 11 inches, are optional and keep the ball in play along the sides.⁹⁵

A goal counts no matter who puts the ball through, including a pony.⁹⁵ After every goal the teams switch ends, which evens out the wind and the turf.⁹⁴⁹⁵

Four players, four jobs

Outdoor polo is four a side.⁹⁵ The positions are numbered on the jerseys:⁹⁷⁹⁶

• No. 1 is the most forward attacker and the main scorer. It is often the team's least experienced player, whose job includes marking the other side's No. 4.
• No. 2 is the second attacker, the one who fights hardest for the ball.
• No. 3 is the pivot, usually the best player on the team and often the captain. It turns defense into attack and feeds Nos. 1 and 2.
• No. 4, the back, defends the goal and sends the ball forward.

Chukkers

A match is divided into periods called chukkers. Under the US Polo Association's (USPA) outdoor rules, a horn sounds after seven minutes of play, and up to 30 seconds of overtime follow. The chukker ends at the next horn, wherever the ball is.⁹⁸ US matches usually run six chukkers outdoors, with four to six depending on the tournament.⁹⁴ Argentina plays eight in its biggest opens; four is common in England and Europe.⁹⁶

A tie is not a tie for long. Play continues after the last chukker "until one side obtains a goal."⁹⁸

Handicaps

Every player has a rating in "goals," from -2 up to 10, with 10 the best. It is not a count of goals scored. It measures horsemanship, hitting, game sense, the quality of the player's ponies and sportsmanship, and the USPA reviews it twice a year.⁹⁴

A team's handicap is the sum of its four players' ratings. Tournaments are capped by that total, so a "12-goal" tournament means no team can add up to more than 12.⁹⁵

In a handicap match, the weaker team starts with goals already on the board. The formula: take the difference in team ratings, divide by six, and multiply by the number of chukkers. In a six-chukker game, a 4-goal team playing a 6-goal team starts 2-0 up.⁹⁴⁹⁵ It is one of the few sports that tries to make an unequal game fair before it starts.

The line of the ball

This is the rule that makes polo polo. At any moment, the ball's path through the air or across the grass extends into an imaginary line, forwards and backwards. That is the line of the ball.⁹⁷

The right of way belongs to the player following that line most closely, at the smallest angle to it, with the ball on their right.⁹⁹⁹⁷ Nobody may cross in front of that player unless they are far enough ahead that there is no chance of a collision.⁹⁹ Crossing is the foul you will see called most; the USPA says right-of-way and ride-off violations are the most frequent calls.⁹⁷

You can't cut across the line, but you can push your way onto it:

• The ride-off. Two riders go side by side and shove with horse and body to move each other off the line. It is legal only at a shallow angle; the Polo Museum puts the limit at 45 degrees.⁹⁵ Two teammates may not ride off one opponent at the same time.⁹⁹
• The hook. A player can block an opponent's swing with their own mallet, but only from the same side as the swing or directly behind it, only while the opponent is hitting, and never above shoulder height.⁹⁹⁹⁷

Right hand only

Every player must hold the mallet in the right hand. The USPA exempts only left-handers registered before January 1, 1974.⁹⁵⁹⁴ The reason is safety. Riders often meet head-on at a gallop, and if everyone swings on the same side, the swings and the paths stay predictable.¹⁰⁰ The right-of-way rules assume that swing, which is why the ball should be on your right.⁹⁹

Left-handed play has been banned before. According to the Dawson & Bell Polo Club, it was barred in the mid-1930s, allowed again after the Second World War when players were scarce, and banned again by the USPA in 1974.¹⁰⁰

The mallet is a bamboo cane, 48-54 inches long, with a cigar-shaped head. Players hit with the side of the head, not the end.⁹⁵ The outdoor ball is hard plastic, about 3.5 inches across and 4.5 ounces, and it travels roughly three times faster than the rider who hit it.⁹⁵

The ponies

They are called ponies by tradition. Most stand well over pony height and most are Thoroughbreds or crosses.⁹⁵ The pony is said to account for "50% to 80%" of a player's ability.⁹⁵

A pony covers one to two miles in a chukker, so players change horses between chukkers. Every player needs at least two horses for a match, and high-goal players bring a whole string and often use a fresh horse every chukker.⁹⁵

Penalties

Two mounted umpires call fouls. If they disagree, a referee at midfield decides.⁹⁵ Penalties are numbered, and the worse the foul, the closer to goal the free hit:⁹⁷⁹⁹

• Penalty 1: a goal, awarded outright, for a dangerous or deliberate foul that stops a likely score.
• Penalty 2: a free hit from 30 yards, or from the spot of the foul.
• Penalty 3: a free hit from 40 yards, in front of goal.
• Penalty 4: a free hit from 60 yards, in front of goal.
• Penalty 5: a free hit from the spot of the foul or from midfield.
• Penalty 6, the "safety": a 60-yard hit for the attackers when a defender knocks the ball over their own back line.

Penalties 7 to 10 cover the procedural end: re-taking botched hits, sending off a pony or a player, and ejection.⁹⁷¹⁰¹

Divot stomping

At halftime, the spectators walk onto the field and tread the clods of turf the hooves have kicked up back into place. It is a social tradition, sometimes with champagne. The USPA advises wedges, not heels.⁹⁴

It is also, if you squint, the only part of polo that resembles Coachella: a few thousand well-dressed people walking around on a polo field, looking at the grass.

Empire's polo years

Al Haagen III founded Empire Polo Club in 1987, four years after he took up the sport.¹⁰ The Polo Museum says his name is "nearly synonymous with polo in California."¹⁰ The club hosted the first 40-goal event in the US and the first US Women's Open, ran a polo school, fielded at least 15 teams each winter, and drew what the museum calls "record-setting attendance" on Sundays.¹⁰ Around 2015, Palm Springs Life put the Sunday crowds at more than 4,000, mostly free of charge, over a 13-week season.¹⁰²

It also had something no other US club had: the only fully lit grass polo field in the country, used for Friday "Polo Under the Lights."⁶⁴ Palm Springs Life went further and called it one of only two in the world.¹⁰²

The grass was the whole point. In 2015 the club watered its fields 11 months a year with groundwater and Colorado River canal water, through computer-controlled sprinklers, and Goldenvoice managed April.¹³ "Polo ponies run on grass. They don't run on dirt," Haagen told The Desert Sun.¹³

Empire's biggest polo moment never happened. It was chosen to host the XII FIP World Polo Championship in October 2021.¹⁰³ Covid postponed it, and when it was played, from October 26 to November 6, 2022, it was in Florida, with the final at Wellington.¹⁰⁴ By then there was no polo at Empire to go back to.

Eldorado, next door

Desert polo did not end in 2021. It moved over the fence.

Eldorado Polo Club is the older of the two. It was founded in 1957 as a members' club at the original Eldorado Country Club in Indian Wells, and rising land values pushed it to Indio by 1979. It was the valley's top polo facility until Empire opened next door.¹⁰² In the 1990s it hosted 22-goal polo and the US Open.¹⁰⁵

In 2012 Goldenvoice bought it, along with the farms around it.⁵⁹ The sale "included a leaseback that let Eldorado keep hosting polo."¹⁰⁶ The club now plays on 13 fields, plus two at Empire's Calhoun Ranch and one at a private ranch. Goldenvoice owns the land, and Eldorado leases it until April, when Goldenvoice hosts Coachella and Stagecoach.¹⁰⁵

That makes the polo players the festival's tenants, on land that used to be theirs, in a season that ends where the festival's build begins.

The season itself runs roughly mid-December to late March. Eldorado's 2018 tournaments ran from January 6 to April 1.¹⁰⁶ In 2024-25 it had practices from mid-December, women's tournaments between Christmas and New Year, and four 12-goal tournaments in February and March.¹⁰⁵

The overlap is real. The festival has been spreading onto Eldorado land for years: The Desert Sun described "the adjacent Eldorado Polo Club, also used by the festival" in 2015,¹³ and the Sahara moved onto it in 2018.⁸³ For 2024, the footings for the new Sahara went in starting in December, while polo season was getting under way next door.⁸³

What stays now

Year-round control means Goldenvoice can build things that don't have to come down.

• The Radiohead bunker. In September 2025 Goldenvoice applied to Indio for a permit for a 16,130-square-foot "commercial foundation," valued at $2.5 million.¹⁰⁷ It became an underground cinema for Radiohead's KID A MNESIA: 17,000 square feet and 38 feet high, beneath the polo fields. Loose desert sand ruled out piles, so the builders dug out the whole footprint, built a concrete box with a steel frame, and buried it. The roof carries sand, turf and up to 1,000 people standing on top. Its designers, Wonder Works, say it "remains on the Coachella site as a permanent fixture."¹⁰⁸ The Desert Sun was less sure what becomes of it next year.¹⁰⁹ The exhibition was announced to travel on to Brooklyn, Chicago, Mexico City and San Francisco; the bunker stayed in Indio.¹¹⁰
• The steel Sahara. The 2024 rebuild swapped aluminum for steel, on about 1,500 tons of concrete, roughly 156 truckloads, poured overnight to keep the trucks off Indio's streets.⁸³ The tent's footing has been permanent since at least 2018, buried two feet under the grass.⁸² Whether the steel itself stays up between festivals, no source says.
• The Rose Garden. Three acres, about 8,000 rose bushes, three Victorian gazebos and a 5,000-square-foot pavilion. It was the edge of the Sunday polo field; now it is the festival's VIP garden and a wedding venue.¹¹¹
• The Forum. A clear-span event building of 48,000 square feet, with a main structure 300 by 160 feet and a 60-foot ceiling.¹¹² That is a polo field's proportions, in feet instead of yards. It is probably a coincidence.
• Hacienda del Toro. Three acres with a 16,000-square-foot permanent tent.⁵⁷
• Medjhool Lake. Ten acres with a lake and three tents.⁵⁷ It is named for the dates grown on the property, and its walkways and footbridges are modeled on Monet's garden at Giverny.⁹

Some festival art now stays permanently, though not on the grounds. Francis Kéré's Sarbalé ke stands in Dr. Carreon Park in Indio, and HANNAH's Monarchs at Lake Cahuilla Veterans Regional Park.¹¹³

The rest of the year

The 2021 deal opened the club to "special events, sporting events, and private functions."¹⁴ Here is what that looks like.

Other festivals. The 2013 Indio deal allowed up to five festivals a year on the site.⁶⁶ The first big extra was Desert Trip in October 2016: the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and the Who, over two weekends, with seats up to $1,599 and 1,000 flushable toilets, against the usual 300.¹¹⁴ Tollett told The New York Times it grossed "approximately $160 million for the two weekends."¹¹⁵ Stereogum called it "Oldchella."¹¹⁴ Power Trip followed on October 6-8, 2023, with Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, Judas Priest, AC/DC, Tool and Metallica, for up to 80,000 a day. Judas Priest replaced Ozzy Osbourne, who cancelled.¹¹⁶

Soccer. Goldenvoice said after the takeover that it wanted other sports on the fields, naming lacrosse, women's field hockey and soccer.⁹ Soccer arrived. AEG's Coachella Valley Invitational, a preseason tournament for MLS and NWSL clubs, has run there since 2022. The 2026 edition ran February 7-14 for MLS and February 15-21 for NWSL, with 21 clubs.¹¹⁷ The Desert Magazine describes two match fields divided by bleachers, a practice field, and a white picket fence, with the turf grown about 15 miles away on the farm that supplies the LA Galaxy's stadium.¹¹⁸ "Quality turf is really important to the game of soccer," AEG's Kara Korber told the magazine.¹¹⁸ The headline put it best: "Forget polo."

Dogs, lacrosse and lights. The grounds' public calendar includes the Kennel Club of Palm Springs Dog Show (January 8-11, 2027), the Sand Storm Lacrosse Festival in its 20th year with more than 450 teams (January 16-17, 2027), the Southwest Arts Festival, a Veterans Day 5K and 10K, the Magic of Lights drive-through in November and December, and the City of Indio's July 4 fireworks and drone show.¹¹⁹

Weddings and the rest. The Rose Garden and the other venues are rented for weddings, corporate meetings, product launches and trade shows. Team-building packages include golf cart polo, hot air balloons, and "live exhibition polo matches."⁵⁷⁶³ AEG's sales page pitches groups from 15 to 90,000.⁶³

So polo is still available at Empire Polo Club, as a corporate add-on.

What might come next. In June 2025 the owner of Empire Polo Club proposed a mixed-use "lifestyle hub" of about 218 acres next to the festival grounds, with housing, retail, dining and possibly a sports venue. County officials approved a key land-use change; final approval was pending.¹²⁰

Still open

• Which numbered polo fields sit under which Coachella stages.
• What it costs to repair the grass after three festival weekends. The only public line is that the grass is "restored after the festivals."¹³
• Whether Spectra and the Sahara steel stand all year.

You have stood on the field. Now ride it. Try it: /play/