New stadium chiefs chase major music concerts

Plans are being considered for a massive pop concert at Dubai’s new 25,000 seat cricket stadium, which successfully hosted a one-day international series between Australia and Pakistan last month.

Dubai Sports City, a $4 billion, 50 million sq ft mixed-use development, which will feature four sports stadiums along with residential, commercial and retail space, is currently in talks with international event promoters to throw a large pop music concert as early as October at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.

“We’ve had a number of discussions with major local entertainment promoters and they are very interested in the opportunity that the stadium provides. We’ve spoken to all the international event promoters in Dubai,” Malcolm Thorpe, director of marketing at Dubai Sports City told Arabian Business on Monday.

The cricket stadium boasts a turf protection system which can placed over the field to allow the construction of a stage for concerts.

“The venue has been identified as being suitable for major entertainment events and that gives the promoters the opportunity to plan for those events that they in the past have not been able to do because the right venue hasn’t been there for them,” Thorpe added.

“We are anticipating before the end of this year we will have the first of some quite significant entertainment events in the cricket stadium.”

Thorpe said the earliest event will take place in October with the stadium likely to be rented out to an event promoter who would be responsible for putting on any potential gig.

He declined to say what artists were being approached as possible performers.

It comes as the UAE faces increasing challenges to attract top international artists due to high costs. Technical equipment and venue hire in Dubai is costly with artist fees much higher than in other parts of the world.

Female American pop star Shakira, British singer George Michael and Alicia Keys have all performed in the UAE in the last couple of years.

A 60,000 capacity multi-purpose stadium for football, rugby and track and field is also currently under construction at Sports City.

The entire Sports City project is due for completion in 2012.

Australia beat Pakistan 3-2 in the one-day series which concluded at the start of last month.

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