Jamal AbdulNasser, Malek Doughan: UAE Pro League Introduction

Reports at the roundtable “Broadcasting 2022. UAE Pro League” of Jamal AbdulNasser, TV Broadcast Operations Manager of UAE Pro League, and Malek Doughan, Marketing and Commercial Affairs Director of UAE Pro League.

Moderator – Ammar Hina.

Jamal AbdulNasser: Hello and thank you for the invite. I work at the UAE Pro League. I manage the stadiums, facilities, and coordinate affairs with LIVE HD as a production company and with the right holders. I am happy to have worked with Ammar and also to see all present.

Malek Doughan: Thank you for extending the invite. I’ve had the pleasure to sit alongside Ammar in previous roundtables and conferences where we were both pitching the same project. It’s an honor to be moderated by Ammar. I think the topic of discussion is the UAE Pro League. I am here in my capacity as marketing and commercial affairs director. I currently oversee everything from marketing operations and engagement – how to engage with diverse audiences- to how to sell those products. I am proud of where our product is currently, and the contribution made by everyone to get here. We want to see something better in the future.

Moderator: I’d like to ask Malek to give us a brief presentation about the UAE Pro League.

Malek Doughan: The UAE Pro League represents football in the UAE. Our vision and mission are to create the highest standards of professionalism not only on the pitch but also when we broadcast our content on global levels. We develop programs and activities that help us achieve our main target which is community happiness while building engaging products for our diverse audiences that transcend beyond the UAE.

UAE Pro League Competitions

Basically, we have 4 major competitions: the new titled sponsorship for the Pro League which is the ADNOC Pro League, the Pro Cup, the Super Cup, and the under 21 category. We run our matches over a whole season in UAE and across with a span of 288 matches that are currently televised on three main takers in the UAE Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah, and also the global distribution. We plan to always focus on building a better product and to build a wider topographic and within the cause of this conversation, we are going to be discussing more on these topics.

UAE Pro League Timeline

A bit on our timeline: this covers when our competitions run and when they finish. We focus on three major competitions, not including the under 21 category. ADNOC runs from August to early June, the Super Cup runs from all through January and the Pro League Cup spans from September all through to January only to continue in March.

Our Teams

Our teams are famously known by everyone on this roundtable. They represent the professional teams in the UAE. They are very big names and Franchises. They’ve been with us since the inception of the League with big names like Al Ain FC, Al Jazira FC, and Al Wahda FC all owned and run by the highest stakeholders in the UAE.

Media & Reach

The success of the last couple of seasons would not be achievable without the collaboration of almost everyone within this panel from Ammar to Live HD. All our partners have helped us reach where we are today. We are happy to say that we have exceeded 18.2 million viewership in the last seasons with more than 5,200 hrs of content. As a product, it shows how diverse and focused we are on content creation which is a very important point to reaching the hearts and minds of our very targeted fan base. With our social media increasing on a year-to-year basis, we are one of the most prominent events in the UAE because what we provide is a very solid value proposition that allows for continuous engagement with our target audience, stakeholders, and broadcast partners.

What we’ve been trying to do over the course of the year is to transition from being just a football match to more of entertainment business. We believe that in other to captivate the audience, you need to create very compelling content. Tell a story. It’s not about football rivalry but also about association and how we can project the values of the UAE through football. Again we rely on technology and the help of our partners; whether it’s immersive or mapping, the utilization of new technology on how to make our content more compelling and attractive is for us what takes all our KPI. From increasing our fanbase to increasing our commercial revenues into becoming a sustainable league with continual growth.

Fans Engagement

We go back to fan engagement because for us, it’s an important topic and I believe our colleagues at Sponix talked about ways we could engage more with our audience. It’s not only about them coming to football but what we can give them and how can we start increasing that affinity to us and alternatively to the clubs we represent. We have to say that our target was always somewhere around 4.1 million residents in the UAE based on the personas that we have identified but in the season before COVID, we have managed to reach around 2.1 million of those that are resident in the UAE has interacted with us in one way or another whether through our broadcasters, social media or roadshow. We started roadshows that expanded over the course of 190 days however COVID’19 had other plans which made us rethink the business and how we are supposed to conduct it.

Some of the prelims of our fan engagement include everything from roadshows, association with superfans or brand ambassadors, and match of the week or fan zones activation where we try to take football into the community. So if you don’t currently interact with us, we have a way of bringing football to you and making you a part of it. In addition, we started other programs -E-Sports Tournament- because we wanted to engage with those that are currently not directly included in football. We started doing the qualifiers by bringing one player from the UAE to participate in the World Cup. And lastly, loyalty programs, we believe that fans spend a lot of time supporting clubs and coming to the matches. So this plans to give them more value.

New Era of Football

The changes that happened in the last couple of seasons have made us take another look at our business and how we can do our business with continuity. COVID had other plans which led us to the cancellation of one of our seasons and from there, the team put protocols in play from PCR testing to sanitization to run a safe environment for the players and the fans. There was a lot of social media awareness and campaigns that made a fanless season impactful.

Live Feeds

In the beginning, when we sat with Ammar, we asked: “what else can we give those seating at home?” They were used to a different match experience, some were on-ground and could touch the players but now, we are having to play with empty stadiums. And I believe that in critical times, this is where innovation is concerned. We included elements that were never in our field, from virtual graphics to augmented reality to virtual cheering, all with the help of our partners. We managed to deliver football matches that lived up to the expectation of those seating at home. We utilized football as a way to decrease the impact of COVID by giving them a sense of normality. I believe that we achieved a successful season last season though we had no fans on-ground.

Way Forward

The implication of this was revealed in the revenues. We’ve had the highest commercial revenue and we’ve been able to sign three new sponsorship deals and get a new title sponsor for the league. We grew more on social media as well as in our TV viewership.

A Window to the Future

Moving forward, we needed to see what can be done to maintain that flow. So now our plan involves how to create more exciting competitions to bring in more passionate fans which would, in turn, increase the right value, revenue and ultimately support our vision in creating more quality teams that compete on not only the local but the regional and even the international. And I believe that this is part of our success moving forward and I hope that within this discussion, you all would help us shed light on more initiatives that we can utilize as a lead and help us grow even further. Thank you!

Ammar Hina: Broadcasting 2022. UAE Pro League