Dubai has a new arena and it is ready to paint the town red

“We have a new attraction in Dubai!” This is a saying that most residents of the emirate are quite accustomed to. This week, Khaleej Times video team had a sneak peek into the new indoor entertainment venue which sits at the end of City Walk.

Known as the Coca Cola Arena, it will welcome its first visitors with a stand-up comedy by Russel Peters on June 6. Once open, this 17,000-seater venue is expected to be the focal point of all things entertainment, musical concerts and even sports.

At first glance, it looks like a bigger version of the City Walk’s Hub Zero entertainment and gaming zone but once inside you know it’s class apart and all so RED, the only colour that you can think of when it comes to the famous sponsors of this arena. You might question whether Dubai really needed another events space.

After all the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre is a few kilometres down the road, the Dubai Opera is a stone’s throw away and to get to the Dubai Design District isn’t too long of a drive either. But this one’s truly unique. And whilst there, the first thing that we wanted to do from a video team’s perspective was to capture the magnificence of this space in all its glory.

To give our readers an immediate glimpse, we even live streamed on our Facebook page – the video now watched close to 30,000 times – the press conference as soon as it began and with it, the lights of the entire amphitheater.

The four large screens hanging from the ceilings coupled with its theatre-style seats, with each providing a breath-taking view of the event floor, left the touring media team, including myself, awe-inspired.

As part of our filming, we also interviewed the CEO of the company managing the venue. He pointed out that most major cities such as London, Singapore, New York and even the capital Abu Dhabi, to name a few, have their own dedicated arenas.

Therefore, Dubai had to have one of its own whilst carrying on the trend of being home to the region’s largest indoor arena. I am glad I was amongst the first few to be there on the day of its unveiling, capturing the new arena on camera.