Kazi Najib Ashraf: gaming in the Middle East

I would relate a personal story for this article to build the tempo but first, let me tell you a bit about the picture above, this particular alley in Dubai controls 60-70% of the gaming business across the Middle East. I am serious folks, this is the heart of the wholesale gaming market in the bustling metropolis of Dubai and the funny thing is that not too many people know this. This street is adjacent to one of the main hubs of mobile phone business called the Gargash Center and during my entire stay of 23 years in the city, it was last November that I had set foot in this locality, so much for being a native.

So here’s my short story and the introduction to the wonderful world of gaming. I lost my job heading an interesting regional venture and got employed in another group involved in the mobile phone trade. The owner of the company decided to send me off to another subsidiary as it was going through a crisis of sorts and asked me to get it fixed. Well, as luck would have it, this was among the leading gaming companies in the Middle East region going through a serious financial crisis. I would leave the brief stint and the crisis story for another time but what I learned here had been an eye opener and started a love affair with a business that earlier I had no idea of.

An advanced gratitude to www.newzoo.com for the great information. Asia Pacific is among the top growth areas for the gaming business and the Middle East takes lead as the growth prospects in this region are the most promising across the world. A young generation with a high disposable income and an otherwise restrictive environment is a recipe for the success of this great vertical.

The Middle East especially the GCC is a US$ 2.6 Billion gaming market as of 2017 and is poised to grow to 4.4 Billion US$ by the year 2020 (PwC). This pace of growth is much faster than the global average. The irony is that this business is still controlled by the unorganized channel and the digital transformation is still in its infancy. People like to visit the physical stores and purchase the games (software) in CDs. Please see the attached chart for details.