Dubai's biggest padel week has a new name above the door. On 15 September 2026, Dubai Premier Padel P1 announced Emaar as title partner of its 2026 edition, which runs from 8 to 15 November at Hamdan Sports Complex. The tournament will now be presented as the Emaar Dubai Premier Padel P1, the name already printed at the top of its official ticketing page. Neither side disclosed the value or the length of the agreement.
The announcement, distributed through PR Newswire by Emaar Properties and the organiser, Gallop Global, describes the deal as the start of a new stage for the event. It is the third edition of a tournament that only arrived in Dubai in November 2024, and the second at Hamdan Sports Complex, where the organisers turned an Olympic swimming pool hall into an indoor padel arena last year. For a young event, landing the developer behind Burj Khalifa and The Dubai Mall as its first title partner is a statement of intent.
It is also a useful case study in sports marketing for any brand weighing event sponsorship in the emirate. A title partnership is the most visible asset a tournament can sell, and the way Emaar has used sport in the past says a lot about what it expects to get from this one.
Title partnerships are the top tier of event sponsorship, and they work differently from a standard logo deal. The sponsor's name becomes part of the event itself, so it travels with every ticket, every broadcast mention, every schedule and every headline that uses the full name. In this case the result is Emaar Dubai Premier Padel P1, and the ticketing platform Platinumlist already lists the event under that title, noting that Emaar is title sponsor for the first time.
Ahmad Al Matrooshi, Executive Director of Emaar Properties, framed the deal in lifestyle terms rather than pure sport. "Emaar is delighted to support the 2026 edition of Dubai Premier Padel P1 as title partner," he said in the release. "The partnership reflects our commitment to creating distinctive experiences for residents and visitors and adds to Dubai's diverse lifestyle and leisure offering." He added that Emaar looks forward to "an exciting week of sport and entertainment" and to welcoming fans to the tournament.
Iván Modia, CEO of Gallop Global and Tournament Director, called it "an important milestone for Dubai Premier Padel P1." In his words, "The tournament has continued to grow year on year, and this partnership allows us to build on that momentum and deliver an even stronger experience for players, fans and partners in 2026."
Read together, the two statements explain the logic. The organiser gets a heavyweight local partner that strengthens its commercial base. Emaar gets eight days of naming rights, and the brand awareness that comes with them, on an international sporting event in its home city, at a moment when padel is one of the most social and fashionable sports among Dubai's residents. That is sports branding in its most direct form: the brand does not sit beside the experience, it becomes part of what people call it.
This is not Emaar's first move in sports sponsorship, and its earlier deals show a pattern. In June 2019, Gulf Today reported that Emaar and Saudi club Al Hilal had agreed a five year strategic partnership, announced on Twitter with a video of Burj Khalifa lit up in the club's logo. Arabian Business reported the agreement at SR305 million, about $81.3 million, citing social media reports, with Emaar receiving commercial rights including its logo on Al Hilal shirts. Mohamed Alabbar, then Emaar's chairman, said football "unites people and communities".
Earlier that year, in February 2019, UAE Team Emirates announced Emaar as a sponsor in a four year agreement, with the team publishing an image of the jersey carrying Emaar branding. On that occasion the same Ahmad Al Matrooshi, then Managing Director of Emaar Properties, said the partnership solidified the company's "dedication to fitness" and expressed the hope that more Emiratis would take up cycling. The team's announcement also noted that Emaar had previously backed the Abu Dhabi World Professional Jiu-Jitsu Championship in 2018.
Closer to home, the UAE Pro League named Emaar title sponsor of the UAE Super Cup in September 2024, for four seasons starting with 2024 to 2025. According to Gulf News, the competition became the Emaar Super Cup, and Mohamed Alabbar, Emaar's founder, called the deal a privilege and framed it as a commitment to sport and community health. So the padel deal is the second time in two years that Emaar has put its name on the title of a sports competition in the UAE.
The common thread is clear. Emaar's sponsorships lean towards community, healthy living and big public moments in the Gulf, which fits a company whose business is not only selling homes. According to its own corporate profile in the release, about 26% of Emaar's revenue comes from malls, hospitality, leisure, entertainment, commercial leasing and international businesses, and it owns or manages 41 hotels and resorts with more than 10,000 keys. For a group whose portfolio includes Burj Khalifa, The Dubai Mall and the Dubai Fountain, a premium sports week that draws residents, families and visitors is a natural extension of brand positioning, and a strong driver of brand awareness among exactly the people who live, shop and stay in its developments.
Emaar joins a tournament that has built its event sponsorship story quickly. For the first edition in 2024, Arab News reported that Dubai Duty Free came on board as official sponsor, with Ramesh Cidambi, its managing director, saying the company was pleased to expand its "diverse sponsorship portfolio". That was a natural fit for a brand that has owned and organised Dubai's ATP and WTA tennis events for more than 30 years.
For 2025, Gulf News reported that e& joined as Official Partner. Fares Hamad Fares, Vice President of Group Digital Marketing at e&, said padel was "surging in popularity across the country" and linked the event to the UAE's National Sports Strategy 2031. At the 2025 finals, according to the Dubai Media Office, the MVP awards carried the names of Oysho and DAMAC, which shows how the organisers are finding ways to package smaller branded moments around the main tournament.
Now the event has a title partner on top of that structure. For the sponsorship market this is the usual path of a successful property: official partners first, then a title partner once the event has shown it can fill an arena and attract the world's best players. Padel title sponsorships are not new in the UAE either, and TRIX20 covered Ellington Properties taking the title of the UAE Padel Tour earlier this year, another sign that Dubai developers see padel as a smart way to reach their audience.
Dubai Premier Padel P1 was announced on 14 July 2024, under the patronage of Sheikh Mansoor bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Sports Council. According to the Dubai Media Office, a multi year hosting agreement brought together the UAE Padel Association, the Department of Economy and Tourism, the Dubai Sports Council, Premier Padel and Gallop Global. The first edition was set for the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Stadium, which had hosted the FIP World Padel Championships in 2022, with 256 players and a combined prize pool of €470,000, about AED 1.89 million. Ahmed Al Khaja, CEO of Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment, called it "the biggest padel event ever held in the emirate."
That first edition ran from 3 to 10 November 2024. The International Padel Federation reported that Arturo Coello and Agustín Tapia won the men's final 6-4, 6-3 against Fede Chingotto and Ale Galán, while Delfi Brea and Bea González beat Ale Alonso and Andrea Ustero 6-2, 6-3 to take the women's title.
For 2025 the event moved to Hamdan Sports Complex and grew considerably. Gulf News and tbreak reported a centre court with 7,000 seats, described as the largest in UAE padel history, plus three secondary courts and two practice courts open to spectators. The Dubai Media Office, reporting on the finals of 16 November 2025, said the venue's ten lane Olympic swimming pool had been converted into a padel arena seating 8,000, which it called the largest indoor padel venue in the MENA region. It described sold out finals and record attendance during the week. Tapia and Coello won the men's title again, Claudia Fernández and Bea González won the women's, and Sheikh Mansoor presented the trophies. Modia said the tournament had "reached a new level this year."
Two editions, two venues, and a jump from a tennis stadium to a purpose built arena in a converted pool hall. That growth curve is what Emaar is buying into, and it is the kind of momentum that makes sports marketing teams pay attention.
The tournament sits on top of a sport that has grown fast at grassroots level. The UAE Padel Association was founded in June 2014, one of the first padel federations in Asia, and has been affiliated with the International Padel Federation since 2016. The UAE Ministry of Sports officially recognised padel in June 2019.
In a March 2024 country profile, the International Padel Federation said the UAE and Saudi Arabia together lead Asia with more than 320 clubs and more than 950 courts, with the UAE holding about 30% of the continent's courts. The UAEPA counted 155 affiliated clubs and 620 affiliated courts in 2023, up 13% on the year before, with more than 1,900 registered players. The federation also estimated around 250,000 fans in the country and said the UAE has the best court to population ratio in Asia after Bahrain, at one court per 10,000 inhabitants.
Officials in Dubai describe the same trend. In November 2024, Fawzia Faridoun, Director of the Community Sports Department at the Dubai Sports Council, told the Dubai Media Office that padel is "among the fastest-developing sport in the UAE" and that it is "on the rise among players of different ages and gender." On the court, the national team has started to deliver as well. Gulf News reported that Emirati player Fares Al Janahi helped the UAE finish fifth at the 2024 FIP World Padel Championships, the best result ever for an Arab or Asian nation. "Padel is a very social sport, that's part of its magic," he told the paper.
That social side is exactly what makes padel attractive for brands. It is played by residents after work, by families at weekends and by business people who use a match the way earlier generations used a round of golf. A brand that sponsors padel in Dubai is speaking to an active, affluent and highly connected community, which is why padel has become one of the more interesting sports sponsorship opportunities in Dubai, and a strong route to brand awareness among people who are hard to reach through traditional advertising.
The Dubai event is not a local exhibition. It is a P1 stop on the Qatar Airways Premier Padel Tour, the official professional circuit run with the International Padel Federation. When the first Dubai edition was announced, the Dubai Media Office said it would be part of a 25 tournament season across 18 countries on five continents.
The 2026 calendar, unveiled by Premier Padel and the FIP, is bigger again: 26 tournaments in 18 countries, nearly three quarters of them indoors. The season opened with the Riyadh Season P1 in February, travelled through Spain, Mexico, the United States, Qatar, Egypt, Belgium, Argentina and Paraguay, and spent the summer in Europe with new stops in London and Pretoria. The Majors are Doha in April, Rome in June, Stade Roland Garros in Paris in September and Acapulco at the end of November. The Premier Padel Finals in Barcelona from 7 to 13 December bring together the top 16 men and top 16 women in the FIP Race Ranking.
Dubai's place in that calendar matters. It belongs to the Middle East swing that follows the mid season break, together with Kuwait City, and it comes just before the final Major and the season ending Finals, when the race for ranking points is at its sharpest. That gives the tournament real sporting weight and guarantees that the leading pairs have a reason to be there. 2026 also brought a new scoring format, the Star Point System, approved by the FIP General Assembly in November 2025. David Sugden, CEO of Premier Padel, called the calendar "a fantastic moment for professional padel", and Luigi Carraro, President of the FIP, said that "professional padel has never been stronger than it is today."
For a title partner, a global tour is a valuable thing to belong to. The Emaar name now sits inside a circuit that is promoted to padel fans around the world, which gives the partnership an international reach that a purely local event could not offer.
According to the press release, the 2026 edition will offer eight days of professional men's and women's competition with ranking points and prize money at stake, plus hospitality, entertainment and premium fan experiences. The event is supported by the Dubai Sports Council, the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, the UAE Padel Association and the International Padel Federation. Tickets start at AED 45 through Platinumlist.
The Platinumlist schedule shows qualifying on 8 and 9 November, main draw play from 10 November with night sessions on the centre court, the semifinals on 14 November and the finals on Sunday 15 November, with the women's final at 6pm and the men's final at 8pm. The page lists Agustín Tapia, Arturo Coello, Ale Galán, Juan Lebrón, Gemma Triay, Delfi Brea and Bea González among the players, and says complimentary tickets are available for the qualifying stages.
Modia has also spoken about the local community. He told Gulf News that he wants the people who play padel every week in Dubai to see the event as "their tournament too", and the newspaper reported that a Legacy Program aims to connect professional padel with the community beyond the tournament week. That is an important point for a title partner. A sponsor with a lifestyle message benefits more from a tournament that feels like a city festival than from one that only speaks to hardcore fans.
For marketers, the Emaar deal offers three clear lessons. First, timing. Emaar is arriving in the third year, after the tournament has proved its crowds and its field of world class players. Early partners like Dubai Duty Free and e& took more risk; Emaar is buying a proven platform with room to grow.
Second, fit. Padel matches Emaar's audience almost perfectly: residents, families and visitors who spend time in malls, hotels and leisure spaces. Good sports marketing is rarely about the biggest audience. It is about the right audience in the right mood, and a sold out padel night in Dubai delivers both.
Third, activation. A title deal only works if it is brought to life around the event: on site experiences, hospitality, social media and content marketing that runs before, during and after the week. The name on the ticket creates recognition, but the stories and experiences around it create preference. Brands thinking about padel sponsorship in Dubai, or about event sponsorship more widely, or any other sports branding project in the UAE, should plan the activation budget together with the rights fee from day one.
Dubai keeps adding major events to its calendar, and local brands keep using them to tell their own story. Emaar's step into padel shows how sponsorships can turn a fast growing sport into a stage for brand building. For companies looking for a marketing agency in Dubai to find and shape the right sports sponsorship, the lesson from this deal is simple: choose a property that matches your audience, join it at the right moment, and make sure people remember more than just your logo.
Sources: PR Newswire, Gulf News, Dubai Media Office, Premier Padel, International Padel Federation, Arab News, Gulf Today, Arabian Business, UAE Team Emirates, Platinumlist, tbreak
