Ask David Powell who Abu Dhabi is really competing against for a Saturday night and he does not name another Gulf city.
“Our number one competitor is people’s living rooms,” he says.
Powell is Chief Strategy and Business Development Officer at Ethara, the company behind most of what fills Abu Dhabi’s sporting and entertainment calendar, from the Grand Prix to UFC fight nights to arena shows. He spoke to Gulf News Entertainment, Lifestyle and Sports Editor Manjusha Radhakrishnan on the latest episode of The Hustle, recorded at Etihad Arena on Yas Island while crews were building out the venue for a UFC card that weekend.
The framing tells you how the business has changed. A decade ago the pitch was a fixture on a calendar. Now it is a reason to leave the house, when a premium broadcast of the same event is available at home for a fraction of the cost and none of the parking. What Ethara is selling instead, Powell says, is the experience of being in a crowd: shared, live, in a room with other people.
Sport stopped being enough
Powell’s blunt version of the strategy is that sport by itself no longer moves tickets. Audiences expect more for their money, and they keep expecting more each year.
The interview happened the day after the FIFA World Cup 2026 final, which staged the tournament’s first halftime show with Madonna, Justin Bieber, Shakira, BTS and Burna Boy. Reaction split hard. Whatever you thought of it, football’s biggest occasion had borrowed the Super Bowl’s playbook wholesale.
That comparison is one Powell reaches for himself. Plenty of people at the Super Bowl could not explain a nickel defence, he notes, and they do not need to. They are there for the spectacle, the glamour, the sense of being inside something the rest of the world is watching.
He argues the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix now works the same way. There is a core of committed F1 fans, and then there is a larger group who are fans of the December weekend itself: the circuit, Yas Island, the concerts, the whole assembled thing.
Seventeen years of phone calls
Ethara’s booking record goes back 17 years and covers more than 100 AAA-tier artists. Powell says the pitch used to be the harder half of the job, because the conversation started with explaining Abu Dhabi to people who had never been. That part has largely gone away. Artists now arrive already knowing the venues, the hotels and the audience.
The lead times have stretched accordingly. Ethara is currently in conversation with artists about 2028.
Repeat visits are the easiest sell of all. Christina Aguilera returns in September, having played Saadiyat Nights a couple of years ago. She has already been through the whole process, Powell says, from the welcome to the crowd to the production, and a call with someone who has that experience is a different call entirely.
Perfectionism about the boring parts
Booking the name is only the start. Powell describes the team as perfectionists about the parts of an evening nobody writes about: where you park, whether the signage actually tells you where to go, how quickly you find your seat, how the usher treats you, whether the food is worth queuing for.
He wants that end-to-end journey, ticket purchase to exit, to be the benchmark other venues measure themselves against, and says there is still room to improve on all of it.
Summer stopped being a dead zone
The calendar has changed shape too. Abu Dhabi used to concentrate the big events in the cooler months. Now the programming runs through the year.
Powell points to Jennifer Lopez selling out Etihad Arena in July, on a Tuesday, on a school night. That was the moment, he says, when the assumption that Abu Dhabi shuts down for the summer stopped holding. The mix around it has broadened as well, taking in fight nights, family productions and cultural events, on the logic that people are in the UAE year-round and families need somewhere to go.
Being copied, and what’s still missing
Powell does not think Abu Dhabi has peaked. He does think it sets the benchmark, and points to hospitality concepts introduced at the Grand Prix, including the Podium Club, that have since turned up in other markets. His view on that is cheerful enough: the highest form of flattery is people copying your ideas.
This year Yasalam grows from a race-weekend programme into a full week, with Andrea Bocelli on the bill alongside after-parties and a wider spread of music aimed at different crowds. More events, Powell says, but not at the cost of quality.
As for the wish list, two names are still outstanding, and they are the two everybody asks about: Taylor Swift and Adele. Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Metallica, Eminem and Coldplay have all played here already.
The milestone he seems proudest of has nothing to do with a booking. Abu Dhabi, he says, has reached the point where it sells itself.
