Polo in the Bay

Polo in the Bay is a premium outdoor polo and hospitality event held at Baypark in Mount Maunganui, designed to open the summer season with a combination of fast-paced sport, curated food and beverage, and first-class guest experiences. The event draws 1,000 patrons across VIP pavilions, private marquees, and public lawn areas, and is positioned firmly at the luxury end of the New Zealand events market.

Orbit Entertainment was engaged by Global 360 Group as Operations Manager across both the 2022 editions of the event, covering supplier management, site build coordination, event day operations, and bump-out. The inaugural event had originally been scheduled for November 2021 but was called off due to weather on the day. Orbit worked with the client to reschedule and successfully delivered that event in January 2022, before returning to deliver the November 2022 edition on its intended date.

Bump-in ran across two days. Day one focused on the large-scale marquee build, bringing 20 marquees onto the site in sequence. Day two brought the underhire inventory in for styling, with Orbit managing site markup, positioning of all assets, underground utilities location, and installation of the polo kickboards required for match play. Every supplier was briefed on expectations before they arrived, and the sequencing was managed to ensure each contractor could access their area without delay or conflict.

The site presentation was a priority on this event. The layout of all site assets was deliberate and precise, and the finished site reflected the premium nature of the event. For a luxury outdoor event, the way a site looks before a single patron walks in sets the tone for everything that follows.

On event day, Orbit managed entry ticketing, hosting services, site crew, and ball boys for the polo matches. When the venue wifi failed mid-event and took the point of sale system down with it, cutting off bar trading entirely, Orbit sourced and arranged delivery of 10 hire devices to the site so that bar operations could resume. The solution was in place and trading had restarted before the outage became a patron-facing problem.

Bump-out was managed efficiently, with Orbit coordinating all supplier departures and timing the sequence to ensure the site was cleared cleanly and on schedule.