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Power League Gaming Survey Reveals Player Trends In UAE & KSA
The report in partnership with Ipsos reveals regional differences in the gaming landscape, including mobile dominance, spending, and inclusivity.
Power League Gaming (PLG), a leading esports marketing agency in the MENA region, has teamed up with market research firm Ipsos to deliver insights into the gaming habits and preferences of players in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The report, based on a December 2024 survey of 300 respondents from each country, sheds light on how these two gaming hubs are evolving.
Gaming Cultures In UAE And KSA
The gaming landscapes in the UAE and Saudi Arabia have distinct characteristics: In the UAE, gamers dedicate an average of 1.2 hours per day to their hobby, while in Saudi Arabia, daily gaming time is slightly lower at one hour.
However, Saudi Arabia boasts a younger and increasingly diverse player base, with 59% aged 15-24 and 27% identifying as female. In contrast, the UAE’s gaming audience is more mature and multicultural, with 62% being expatriates and 36% aged 30 or older.
Mobile Dominates, But Other Platforms Remain Popular
Across both nations, mobile gaming is the most popular platform: In the UAE, 77% of gamers play on mobile devices, while 71% in Saudi Arabia do the same. Console gaming, however, has a stronger foothold in Saudi Arabia, with 50% of players opting for consoles compared to 46% in the UAE.
Meanwhile, the UAE leads in PC gaming, with 45% of gamers choosing desktops or laptops, compared to 34% in Saudi Arabia. These variations reflect differences in accessibility, affordability, and gaming culture in each country.
Diverse Tastes And The Role Of Localized Content
Game preferences also show distinct trends. In Saudi Arabia, Fortnite is a top choice, particularly among younger players and women. Meanwhile, PUBG and EAFC (EA Sports FC) appeal more to male gamers. In the UAE, game engagement is spread across popular titles like Minecraft, PUBG, and Fortnite, catering to a wider audience. Across both markets, localized content — including culturally relevant themes and language options — plays a key role in keeping gamers engaged.
Spending Habits And Brand Influence
In-game purchases are an integral part of the gaming ecosystem in both countries. In Saudi Arabia, 67% of gamers spend on virtual items, with an average monthly expenditure of SAR 87, while 66% of UAE gamers spend an average of AED 92. Purchasing decisions are often influenced by online reviews, social media, and discounts, presenting a clear opportunity for brands to connect with gamers through targeted marketing strategies.
Also Read: Saudi Arabia Unveils World’s First Gaming And eSport District
Gaming As Part Of Daily Life
Gaming has become more than just entertainment — it’s now a lifestyle. In Saudi Arabia, six in ten gamers report eating or drinking while playing, illustrating how gaming blends into daily routines. Both UAE and Saudi gamers also actively engage with gaming-related content on platforms like YouTube and Twitch, reinforcing gaming’s role as a social and cultural passtime.
The findings from Ipsos underscore the thriving gaming culture in both countries, each with distinct opportunities for growth. While the UAE’s gaming scene is shaped by its diverse and tech-savvy population, Saudi Arabia’s younger and increasingly inclusive gaming community signals a strong future for the industry.
News
UAE-Built Falcon-H1 Arabic Leads LLM Benchmarks
The lean Emirati-built language model beats larger global systems and puts Arabic at the center of training.
Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute has released an Arabic-first large language model that tops global test boards, an uncommon edge for a region long served by English-centric systems.
Falcon-H1 Arabic comes in 3B, 7B and 34B versions. The flagship posts 75.36% accuracy on comprehensive Arabic tasks and ranks first on the Open Arabic LLM Leaderboard. It also outperforms Meta’s Llama-70B and Alibaba’s Qwen-72B while using less than half their parameters. The smallest model beats Microsoft’s Phi-4 Mini by ten percentage points on equivalent benchmarks.
Arabic remains hard territory for AI. Flexible word order, dense morphology and constant switching between regional dialects and Modern Standard Arabic leave many global models missing context or tone. Academic research has pointed to a shortage of annotated datasets for dialect and informal speech. The impact shows up in classrooms, call centers and government portals where Arabic chatbots lag their English counterparts.
TII trained Falcon-H1 Arabic on formal writing, dialects and culturally grounded content. Beyond scores, it handles practical use: long conversations, reasoning rather than literal translation, and inputs of up to 192,000 words — enough for medical records or legal filings.
“The aim is innovation that is accessible, relevant, and impactful,” said Faisal Al Bannai, Adviser to the UAE President and Secretary-General of the Advanced Technology Research Council.
Also Read: Governata Raises $4M For Saudi AI Data-Governance Push
Arabic is spoken by more than 450 million people across over 20 countries, yet has often been treated as a secondary language for foundation models. The UAE move signals a push to flip that logic and build Arabic-native stacks rather than wait for global systems to improve.
Falcon models have led their categories since 2023. With H1 Arabic, TII is offering free access via chat.falconllm.tii.ae for developers, media, healthcare and public-sector users looking to automate in natural Arabic.
As the region continues to invest in sovereign computing and data localization, the addition of Falcon-H1 Arabic adds a powerful tool built for the native language, instead of an afterthought attached to an English-trained system.
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