Life isn`t always easy for the average Oak Brook Polo Club member.
For one thing, he finds shopping to be a gosh-darn nuisance, pardon his French. And what with birthdays, anniversaries and that upcoming black-tie soiree commemorating the day Muffy`s braces come off, he spends more time perusing merchandise than an Amway distributor, whatever that is.
The average polo spectator has her own burden to shoulder. She`s thinking of buying a fur coat, but it looks like the budget won`t be able to handle that and a Caribbean vacation. To get the fur, she may have to vacation-ugh!-domestically this year. Goodbye St. Croix, hello Redneck Riviera.
These and other eye-opening tidbits come to us courtesy of the Oak Brook Polo Club, which recently completed a survey of its membership. The survey, sort of a Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous by the numbers, discloses a great deal about America`s least-known athletes (synchronized swimmers being a possible exception).
For example, the survey reveals that the average member is male (there are relatively few female members, and still fewer female players), 40 and self-employed. He pulls down more than $100,000 per annum, owns at least two homes and an income property or two (combined value: $650,000) and has a stock portfolio worth just over half a million dollars.
The survey was handled by Patty Steinman, director of public relations at the Oak Brook Polo Club. She says the survey was taken to gather some statistical insight into the club`s 600-plus members. ”We`ve talked about
(doing) this for years,” she says. ”Most of the members were anxious to find out the results.”
Perhaps more important, the survey provided numbers to dangle in front of corporate sponsors.
The newly acquired data also dovetails nicely with the expansion of Score magazine. Publisher (and Oak Brook Polo Club chairman) Michael Butler is taking the magazine national, chronicling not just the doings at Oak Brook Polo Club but also ”a behind-the-scenes look at polo as a lifestyle,”
according to the club newsletter. Potential advertisers are always interested in demographic profiles.
The Oak Brook Polo Club profile should make them drool. By and large, these are people with lots of money and a strong inclination to spend it. These are people who like to dance and don`t mind in the least paying the fiddler-with a hefty tip thrown in.
For example, 42 percent of the respondents take three or four traveling vacations each year, 43 percent purchase wine by the case, 51 percent eat at restaurants more than 10 times per month, 39.5 percent entertain at home two or three times a month and 19.5 percent own four or more cars (and not a Yugo in the bunch).
Though shopping is a chore, 52.5 percent patronize department stores, 63 percent buy from fine jewelers, 43.5 percent shop at galleries and 40 percent know their furrier. And 12 percent buy from ”other” stores, including wholesale stores and auctions. One member indicated that he shopped at Indian reservations.
And poloists aren`t just buyers; they`re joiners: 30 percent belong to a golf/pool/tennis club; 27 percent belong to a country club; 41 percent belong to a health club and fully 16 percent belong to clubs in the ominously anonymous ”other” category. (John Birch Society? Islamic Jihad? Trilateral Commission? They don`t say.)
Steinman sent 10-page surveys to all 600 club members as of January, 1988. She got 140 usable responses.
The survey yielded a few surprises, Steinman reports, noting that most members who are parents send their children to-gasp!-public school.
”Another thing,” says Steinman, ”is that people spend far less on clothing than I thought. Thirty percent spend only $2,500 to $5,000 a year on clothes. I realize that`s a lot to some people, but when you look at the income level, though, I thought that it would be higher.” About 8 percent, Steinman says, spend more than $25,000 a year on clothing.
Steinman fudged just a bit on the survey. According to the raw numbers, more members drink vodka (54 percent) than scotch (34 percent). Yet Steinman`s profile of the average club member mentions a preference for scotch.
”When I wrote it, we put in scotch,” she admits. ”It sounded more masculine.”
And the profile on the average spectator, the 30-year-old female deliberating about that new fur, is based on imaginary statistics. There was no survey taken of spectators. ”I put that together sort of tongue-in-cheek,” Steinman says.
One wonders if the Oak Brook Polo Club isn`t playing with fire. What, for example, will be the reaction of the $95,000-per-year executive who skims the newsletter over breakfast and learns that, among his poloist peers, he`s strictly second-rate? He`ll probably fire the maid, squeeze his brother out of the company and neuter the family akita, just for spite.
And all these snide comments may be misplaced, too. No doubt the average polo player has problems and pressures we can`t begin to understand. Can you possibly imagine what it`s like to work with a partner who is a mindless, mute, unimaginative drone, a creature who hasn`t evolved appreciably in centuries, who can`t even be trusted not to exercise his bodily functions in public? You can? Well, sorry to hear that.
Polo, we`re told, originated centuries ago in Persia, now known as Iran, and is the world`s oldest team sport. (Embassy-storming, another Iranian pastime, began some centuries later.) Regulation polo balls being in short supply then, the fun-loving Persians would play the game with the decapitated heads of captured enemy troops. ”Waste not, want not” seemed to be the operative phrase back then, but fortunately the game has transcended those austere beginnings. Though the notion of using the severed body parts of business rivals no doubt finds favor with at least some of today`s poloists, the practice has yet to be sanctioned officially.
