Country Profile: UAE

With the UAE now established as a regular stop on many global tours, promoters here are now seeking to establish the nation as a hub to link Europe with Asia, Africa, and India.

“The main challenge is joining the dots between markets,” says Daniel Goldberg, co-founder and COO of Sony-owned MAC Global, which works across the Middle East. “Some markets we actively promote in, but others require strong communication between other entities to collaboratively align tour routing. It’s becoming less disjointed…which helps place the GCC region as a viable touring market, rather than artists coming for one-off shows. We first successfully did this ten years ago when we toured Ed Sheeran in the UAE, Oman, Qatar, and India. That has forever been our blueprint.”

Alongside MAC Global, the major promoters here are Live Nation, All Things Live (ATL), SES Live! (which specialises in family entertainment) and Ethara, which was formed after state-backed promoter Flash Entertainment merged with Abu Dhabi Motorsports Management.

“Despite political tensions in the broader region, demand for talent has remained solid”

“Despite political tensions in the broader region, demand for talent has remained solid,” reports Live Nation’s Middle East president James Craven. “Our 2024 show count is up on the previous year, and we are already forecasting a significant leap in 2025 as the pipeline looks extremely strong.

“Building our regional touring business remains a core focus for all our talent teams, across Western, Arabic, family, and comedy.” After the success of the Middle East’s inaugural Wireless Festival last year, November will see it return to Yas Island for its second edition with a lineup including SZA, 21 Savage, Yeat, Karan Aujla, Fridayy, and Flo Milli.

Goldberg says his company recently had success with hard-ticketed shows by André Rieu, and it has Take That, Lang Lang, and Sophie Ellis-Bextor to come. “Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait also remain important markets for us,” he adds, saying André Rieu was a notable success selling over 12,000 tickets

“Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait also remain important markets for us”

When it comes to bringing new artists to the region, the UAE market is the most mature, says Goldberg. However, “the success of aspiring artists rests on the importance governments [across the region] place on helping grow the creative sector by implementing frameworks to protect their rights through music copyright and publishing, for example.”

ATL started 2024 with two sold-out shows at The Sevens Stadium by Ed Sheeran and has Green Day and Offspring in January 2025 but at the Dubai Expo.

ATL Middle East CEO Thomas Ovesen says that since the beginning of the year, the company has increasingly been booking not as promoter but in collaboration with either a venue or with an event owner. “That has put us into a different type of event than what we would normally do. As well as Ludovico [Einaudi] at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, we have many small- to medium-scale events such as Apocalyptica at Agenda in Dubai in September and shows at the Dubai Opera including Buena Vista All Stars, Glenn Hughes performing Deep Purple, and others.

“As a result, volume-wise, we have so much more on our plate than we normally would do. We are also working on Bryan Adams shows across the region. Having promoted a sold-out arena show in Dubai last year, we are now looking at multiple shows across the Middle East and into India. The India dates are already on sale and doing incredibly well.”

“Volume-wise, we have so much more on our plate than we normally would do.”

SES Live! is the market’s leader in family entertainment, promoting shows such as Disney On Ice, Marvel Universe Live, and Cirque du Soleil. “We find there is always demand for shows like this, where the whole family can come together, with multiple generations of each family, to experience something special,” says CEO and founder Ali Haidary.

Business development director Alison Goldsmith says the biggest challenge businesses face is transportation. “With a massive change to the shipping times, particularly in and around our region, this has really affected our ability to bring large-scale shows here. While air freight can be an option, the costs are prohibitive to make the shows work financially. We have been working with our partners to set realistic transport schedules to ensure we are going to be able to visit as many cities as we can with as little downtime as possible, but we are ensuring we add additional days to avoid any issues with upcoming shows.”

Nonetheless, the company is overcoming these challenges, and there’s no sign of slow-down in demand. “We have delivered more shows in the last 12 months than in any previous year and reached more audiences than at any time in our company’s history,” says Haidary.