Mark Bellissimo, managing partner of Wellington Equestrian Partners and new owner of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, announced plans last week to reinvigorate and expand polo in Wellington.
At a press conference held Friday, Jan. 6, Bellissimo was accompanied by Annabelle Gundlach, a hunter/jumper rider turned polo player with the Postage Stamp Farm team, as well as Bob Puetz and Duncan Huyler of the United States Polo Association, who offered their support to help elevate the success of polo in Wellington, and top polo player Nic Roldan of the Grand Champions Polo Club team.
Bellissimo’s partnership purchased IPC after the 2016 U.S. Polo Championship last spring.
“Last week was our inaugural polo event, and I was very pleased with the outcome,” he said. “Given it was on Jan. 1… and to have the crowd that we had show up, we were very pleased. We had a great crowd in all the different areas.”
Villa del Lago defeated Postage Stamp Farm 12-9 to claim the Herbie Pennell Cup at the first game on Jan. 1 on the Engel & Völkers stadium field at IPC.
“I think [Director of Polo] Jimmy Newman and his team did a fantastic job of operating the event seamlessly, and I would hope that no one saw a gap in the presentation from last year,” Bellissimo said. “The voice of polo, Tony Coppola, was there on the sideline, and I thank him for that.”
It was Gundlach’s first foray on the main field.
“I think that was very exciting, so we’re hoping that this season is a great season,” Bellissimo continued. “We have eight teams in our Joe Barry Memorial Cup tournament. We’ve got 12 teams in the Ylvisaker Cup.”
Bellissimo said he is often asked about the future of polo at IPC with the new ownership.
“We purchased the property due to our fundamental belief in Wellington as a world center for equestrian sport, and the people are drawn by the passion for horses, and the three dimensions for that are going to be the hunter-jumper, dressage and polo,” he said. “Those are the three legs of the stool, and fundamentally, we need to maintain that strength.”
Bellissimo said his partnership will employ a similar philosophy with polo that it used when it set out to develop show jumping and dressage.
They initiated a strategy to draw out a broader, deeper population. It extended member divisions from 33 to 84, increased prize money from $2 million to $9 million, and since then that business has quintupled, he said. Last year, the show grounds grossed 3,000 entries, and during the circuit they averaged attendance of 2,750 per event through 12 weeks.
“Dressage didn’t even exist in this community,” Bellissimo said. “It’s now the world’s largest and richest prize money in all of dressage. Those two venues are attracting people from 50 states and 43 countries.”
Bellissimo believes that polo is probably more synonymous with Wellington than either of the other two sports, despite that it’s a smaller concession.
“Polo is an important part of that culture, so we are going to be trying to use some of the relationships we have to do sponsorships,” he said. “My wife runs the sponsorships for us, which is in the tens of millions on an annual basis. That portfolio is probably the strongest in the world, and we’re hopeful that we can start leveraging and introducing those sponsors into this sport.”
Wellington Equestrian Partners views this year as a stabilization year at IPC, he said.
“In other words, we just come in and get our feet wet and introduce ourselves to the community,” Bellissimo said. “It’s challenging. I’m an outsider here, as I was at jumping… Our goal as an organization is to make sure that that this is the world center for polo outside of Argentina, and that this is something that can grow.”
Part of that growth is developing interconnections between polo and other equestrian disciplines.
“My belief is that the only way for it to grow is to connect this venue and sport with the 4,000 families that come to Wellington that love equestrian sport who have young men or young women and families that love to ride horses,” Bellissimo said.
For example, Gundlach’s transition from jumping to polo could be a harbinger of positive things.
“Annabelle does represent what I think is the future pathway for the development of new patrons and new players — people who know how to ride horses,” he said. “They love horses, they love the sport, they are committed to Wellington, and fundamentally, that is the greatest harvest area in the world, bar none.”
Bellissimo noted that his daughters and wife all have played polo from time to time. He hopes to create a gateway into the sport through greater accessibility.
“We’re going to develop that gateway through a three- or four-step process,” he said. “The first step is we’re going to work with USPA. We believe that there is a lot of great talent around the table and a great passage long-term, and we would like to work on ways to develop programs, and start with a world-class polo academy, on-site, easily accessible on this property. Hopefully, that’s going to launch next year.”
He hopes polo camps and clinics will attract people to get into the sport, and Wellington Equestrian Partners will be using its relationships with other areas of equestrian sport to get people into the academy.
“We are going to set up training camps and clinics and other events to drive interest into the sport,” Bellissimo said. “We’re trying to create some energy around that… We’re hoping to have an arena polo challenge on Jan. 26, which is what we call gladiator polo, which will be sort of an introduction to a professional tournament… We’re going to introduce the game and invite the hunter-jumpers and as many people around to see these great athletes and great horses in a very self-contained environment.”
Bellissimo said that Wellington Equestrian Partners has started an initiative to further strengthen the Wellington equestrian industry.
“This is probably our most ambitious initiative since we’ve been here,” he said. “It will allow us to create a commercial platform for equestrian sport in this community that will allow polo, dressage and show jumping to thrive and attract attention from all over the world… We’ve invested more than $300 million in this community, and we will invest a lot more to make sure that all of these sports thrive in the near and distant future.”
For more information about the 2017 polo season, visit www.internationalpoloclub.com.
ABOVE: Polo players Nic Roldan and Annabelle Gundlach, Bob Puetz and Duncan Huyler of USPA, and Mark Bellissimo of Wellington Equestrian Partners.
