Empire Polo Club
In 1987, the Empire Polo Club opened on a thousand acres in Indio with twelve polo grounds — one of the largest polo complexes on the West Coast. Six years later, it signed a lease arrangement with a concert promoter called Goldenvoice. The music that followed has generated more revenue, drawn more people, and attracted more attention than anything that ever happened on a polo field. The polo fields themselves closed permanently in November 2021.
From Polo to Pop
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival began at Empire Polo Club in 1999, two years after Goldenvoice had started using the grounds for concerts. The arrangement that grew from the 1993 lease between owner Alex Haagen III and Goldenvoice eventually became a 28-year formal contract signed in 2021 — a commitment that effectively converted the polo facility into a permanent festival venue and ended any realistic possibility of polo resuming. In the years between the first Coachella festival and that contract signing, Empire Polo Club transformed from a regional sporting facility to one of the most economically significant event sites in the world. The Stagecoach Country Music Festival, also on the grounds, added a second major anchor.
Desert Trip and Power Trip
The club's scale made it the only venue in the region capable of hosting events that required the infrastructure of a small city. In October 2016, Desert Trip brought together Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters, and The Who across two weekends — a lineup that had never been assembled and was immediately nicknamed 'Oldchella' by the press. The gross revenue from that event exceeded anything Coachella itself had generated to that point. In October 2023, Power Trip assembled Metallica, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Tool, and Guns N' Roses in a similar format aimed at a different generation of rock listeners. The polo grounds functioned as a blank canvas on which these productions could be constructed from scratch each time.
Phish on Halloween
Among the more specific events in Empire Polo Club's history was Festival 8 in October 2009, when Phish used the venue for a Halloween concert at which they performed Exile on Main Street — the Rolling Stones album from 1972 — as their 'musical costume,' as the band termed it. The performance became a reference point among Phish fans for the festival's approach to the holiday tradition the band had built over decades. The polo club's wide-open grounds accommodated the camping festival format that events like Festival 8 require — a logistics footprint that few Southern California venues can support.
From the Air
Empire Polo Club is located in Indio at approximately 33.68°N, 116.24°W, in the central-eastern Coachella Valley. The facility's 1,000 acres are visible from the air as a large expanse of managed grass surrounded by the desert and agricultural landscape of the valley floor. During Coachella and Stagecoach festivals (typically April), the grounds support massive temporary infrastructure including stages, camping areas, and vehicle access routes that are visually prominent from altitude. Nearest airports: Palm Springs International (KPSP, approximately 12 miles northwest), Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport (KTRM, approximately 8 miles east-southeast). The valley floor in Indio sits at approximately 50 feet below sea level.