New figures released by Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) reveal a series of high-profile events, academies, tournaments and one-off celebrity-endorsed activities saw more than 175,081 guests attend this year’s Dubai Sports World – an 80-day indoor sports extravaganza which ended last weekend.
The mammoth attendance figure - which represents a 43.5% rise on the 122,007 visitors who attended last year’s 70-day event - has resulted in the busiest outing to date at the region’s largest indoor summer sports venue.
“We’ve seen across-the-board growth in all aspects of performance at this year’s Dubai Sports World,” said Ahmed Alkhaja, Senior Vice President - Venues, DWTC. “The record attendance figure is no accident; it is the result of a compelling, summer-long calendar of community-driven events that appealed to a broader range of Dubai’s residents and visitors.”
Spanning more than 20,000m² of indoor space, Dubai Sports World occupied Sheikh Saeed Halls 1 and 2, as well as the multi-purpose Trade Centre Arena at DWTC. The expansive venue featured eight, pro-standard pitches for five or seven-a-side football and rugby, six badminton courts, one volleyball court, a cricket wicket, three basketball courts, one tennis court, a skate-boarding and BMX park, a state-of-the-art gym with AED1,000,000 worth of cutting-edge Technogym equipment, a 600-metre running track, 12 free-to-use table tennis tables and tiered seating for over 1,200 spectators.
Mass participation events such as the inaugural Dubai Sports World Corporate Cup – a month-long five-a-side football tournament – and a unique, charity-driven Guinness World Record attempt for the ‘World’s Largest Boxing Lesson’ led by boxing’s former WBA heavyweight world champion, David Haye, both attracted bumper crowds, while a special evening of Kendo - a martial art form widely-practiced in Japan and many other nations across the world – helped add an element of intrigue to the venue’s action-packed bill.
Additionally, a series of world-class academy concepts operated by IFA Sports, California Tennis, G-Force Cricket, RAGE Skate Park, Dubai Badminton, Original Fitness Company and Tennis 360, as well as the international launch of African football star Frederic Kanoute’s new KAFO Academy, contributed heavily to footfall as hundreds of children visited Dubai Sports World on a daily basis for specialist, professionally-supervised sports training programmes.
“This has been a landmark year for us in terms of diversifying our in-venue products and content,” added Alkhaja. “Thanks to strategic partnerships with domestic sporting bodies such as Dubai Sports Council and the UAE Athletics Federation, Dubai Sports World has evolved from a summer sports venue into a multi-faceted seasonal extravaganza. The public has responded time-and-time again to incentivised online booking promotions, events with global sporting celebrities and engaging experiential promotions conducted by our energetic sponsors.”
With plans to further expand its ‘All Sports, All Summer’ concept by incorporating a raft of new offerings next year, the milestone fifth Dubai Sports World will return to DWTC from June 10 to August 30 in 2015.
