From coffee to consoles: How Ahmed Bin Sulayem is turning Dubai into a gaming hub

Ahmed Bin Sulayem follows his passions.

Running the massive Dubai Multi Commodities Centre, which was established in 2002 as a hub for the emirate’s flourishing diamond industry, Bin Sulayem channeled his deep love of coffee into creating a Middle East exchange for the caffeinated crop. The coffee division, which serves about 300 member companies, now includes warehouses for storing raw beans, industrial roasters, packaging lines, office suites, and a training institute for baristas.

Bin Sulayem, the DMCC’s Executive Chairman and CEO, is following a similar roadmap for computer gaming, an industry that has mushroomed into a $350 billion global market. Early on, the DMCC became a magnet for tech companies and now hosts firms active in artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity and digital finance.

But it’s his favorite video games such as “Street Fighter,” “Hitman,” ”Braid,” ”The Legend of Zelda,” and “Assassin’s Creed” that are fueling the current endeavor.

“I am a gaming addict,” Bin Sulayem told The Circuit in an interview. “That’s the future.”

Employing 90,000 people, DMCC is the city’s largest free-trade zone and functions as a semi-independent city within the Dubai metropolis. Its twin districts, Jumeirah Lakes Towers and Uptown Dubai, contain 87 commercial and residential buildings, with offices, apartments, restaurants, and retail stores. Starting from 28 companies when it opened almost a quarter-century ago, DMCC now counts 26,000 member companies from 180 countries.

The sprawling business district competes with the smaller Dubai International Financial Centre, which has about 8,800 companies, but contains the Gulf’s largest concentration of global banks and asset managers, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock. The DIFC is also a base for the world’s biggest hedge funds, such as Millennium and Point72.

Bin Sulayem, an intense, bearded man in his 40s, is the scion of one of Dubai’s wealthiest and most influential families. His father, Sultan Bin Sulayem, is the former Chairman and CEO of DP World, one of the world’s largest port and logistics companies.

The DMCC’s recent focus on developing computer games emerged from its burgeoning tech ecosystem and now includes more than 150 gaming companies, about 40% of the industry’s presence in Dubai. The city has set a target to create 30,000 new jobs in gaming companies by 2033, which is projected to contribute $1 billion to GDP. Analysts estimate the UAE gaming market could reach $2.4 billion in revenue over the next decade. 

“I enjoy every now and then when the Arabic press covers some big news from DMCC and gaming,” Bin Sulayem said. “I call my mother. I tell her, ‘Open the newspaper.’ She looks at it and I say, ‘Remember when you were whipping me because I stayed up late playing video games? Just wanted you to know.’”

DMCC’s gaming push comes as Saudi Arabia has emerged as the region’s biggest force in the industry, with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – himself an avid gamer – making gaming and esports a key part of his Vision 2030 economic program. The kingdom’s Public Investment Fund has spent a fortune on gaming companies, including the $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts, the largest leveraged buyout in history.

DMCC is taking a different approach, focusing on attracting game developers, startups and technology companies rather than buying major global publishers.

Mario Rizzo, co-founder and CEO of DMCC-based Artisan Studios, said he was drawn to Dubai almost five years ago by the potential to create something new. He saw the GCC’s young population, high player engagement, strong spending power, and the untapped potential of Arabic-language gaming as unique advantages. 

“When I came here, actually, it was a little scary because I went and met with people, and nobody knew anything about gaming. It was like a completely blank slate,” Rizzo told The Circuit.

“If you come now as an investor, you participate in the growth. This is where you’ll get the highest return,” said Rizzo, a California native who previously worked at Sony and Electronic Arts. “If you wait, someone else will crack it first.”

In a report that Bin Sulayem wrote on developing gaming in both Dubai and across the GCC region, he points to the dearth of Arabic-language gaming and support as an important area for the region to focus on. 

“The opportunity is one of full Arabic platform parity, i.e., right-to-left interface logic, Arabic typography, store layout, community moderation, support flows, and regional commerce,” Bin Sulayem writes.

Across the GCC, Bin Sulayem says the gaming industry is not underdeveloped, but shows a “distinct lack of parity with mature gaming markets” such as Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe.

“Players across the region already buy, subscribe, download, and stream socially at high levels of spend, and local studios are actively building increasingly sophisticated communities,” he writes.

Still, the “defining layers of the modern gaming experience, namely cloud streaming, Arabic-native storefronts, official hardware ecosystems, regional developer relations, and local payment rails, remain largely unbuilt or inconsistent across the region.”

Bin Sulayem sees lessons in institutional models elsewhere in the world, most notably in Canada and France, which became industry leaders through aggressive tax credits and developer subsidies.

”The UAE is uniquely positioned to adopt a bespoke version of these frameworks,” he said. “Where other regional markets focus on capital deployment, the UAE’s strategic advantage lies in policy innovation, regulatory stability, and ease of doing business.”