ILMC panel preview: Middle East Live – Venue Boom

It is wonderful to host the exciting Middle East Live: Venue Boom session at the 2025 edition of ILMC. Our speakers include many leading venue experts within the region including the UAE’s Brint Jackson from Ethara and Mark Jan Kar from Coca-Cola Arena; and Saudi Arabia’s Khouloud Ben Khalifa from Riyadh’s Rotana Arena and Barry Bremner from Qiddiya.

As I celebrate 25 years supporting the ILMC, and having led many international businesses, including Oak View Group and the European Arenas Association, it is amazing to see the ground-breaking changes occurring in the Middle East.

At the start of the new millennium, much of the Middle East Gulf Region had not developed in terms of sports and live entertainment content and infrastructure. Today, the Persian Gulf region attracts and produces some of the world’s major events, including Formula One Grand Prix races in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

The NBA has hosted several games at Etihad Arena for the past three seasons. And for music and festival’s, the strength of the region is clearly demonstrated by Coldplay’s record-setting four shows attracting 200,000 fans at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City Stadium, and with MDLBEAST’s Soundstorm festival, located near Riyadh, attracting annually more than 100 artists and 700,000 fans.

“For the next five to ten years, the region will continue to explode”

For the next five to ten years, the region will continue to explode, with new sport and entertainment venues in Saudi Arabia located within major “giga projects” and markets. These include Riyadh’s Diriyah and King Salman Park, and other projects in Qiddiya – NEOM and ROSHN – and cities including Jeddah and Dammam. Many of these will be developed to support the 2030 World Expo and the 2034 FIFA World Cup, featuring 15 proposed stadiums.

It is also important to recognise the paradigm shift of event production in the Middle East. Instead of hosting special one-off events in the region, with many artists not bringing their full production due to the expense of travel, set-up costs, and lack of facilities, the global touring market for artists now has multiple cities within the region from which to host concerts and sport events. Thus, planning can be accomplished on an east-to-west (and vice-versa) basis, encompassing routing through Europe to the Middle East, Africa/South Africa, and Asia.

There probably is no better example than Coldplay’s global Music of the Spheres Tour, which began in 2022 and will end this August, with 225 concerts encompassing unique markets. These include Bocaue in the Philippines, Jakarta, Kaohsiung in Taiwan, and Mumbai and Ahmedabad in India, in addition to the aforementioned UAE shows.

Please join us for this exciting session and to hear from the industry experts on the tremendous growth of the venue and entertainment business!

• Brian Kabatznick will host Middle East Live: Venue Boom at ILMC on Thursday 27 February from 11:30-12:30.

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