Bahraini Football Community App Malaeb Joins Vooora’s SportsTech Accelerator

As SportsTech becomes a familiar phrase across the Middle East and beyond, the Arab world’s love for football has already helped Malaeb - a community app that allows users to book football pitches and find amateur matches and teams to join - garner over 200,000 users and over 500 locations in Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. That massive growth, in four short years, has not only changed the way football fanatics organise matches across the GCC, but piqued the interests of one of the largest football content platforms in the Middle East, as Kooora.com-powered Voora Ventures announces an acceleration agreement with Malaeb.

Vooora Ventures is a startup accelerator focused on innovation in sport, and its partnership with Kooora.com is part of the content portal’s vision to harness the power of its 20 million monthly unique users to strengthen the SportsTech ecosystem in the region as a whole. Hani Thalji, managing partner of Vooora Ventures, explains: “Our strategic partnership with Kooora is based on a mutual vision of perceiving innovation and technology as necessary pillars to handle future needs and expectations of people in the region. Koora’s CEO Mustafa Mohammad echoes that notion, saying that “we have a responsibility in developing the whole range of the sports ecosystem for players to spectators. We believe that there is a gap in innovative ventures in the Middle East whether in sports lifestyle, entertainment, technology, media and support services. Vooora will provide startups with endorsement, network and reach across the MENA region.”

“We admire the journey of Malaeb and the value it offers to its audiences, and our partnership with Malaeb comes as a realisation of our vision to create sounding alliances to provide actual and on-the-ground support to startups by providing them with tools, business support, marketing reach, knowhow, access to investment, strategic partnerships and much more, to help them achieve their original vision on more solid grounds and at a faster pace,” continues Hani Thalji.
Meanwhile, Yasser Abdulaziz, CEO of Malaeb, commented on this partnership saying: “We are very pleased to have signed this partnership with Vooora. The value that the Vooora team can bring to us was very evident from day one and is definitely something that we’re looking forward to capitalise on. We are also obviously very excited to work with Kooora who are a household name for sports fans in the MENA region and tapping into their network, audience, and expertise to introduce Malaeb into the rest of the MENA region. All three parties are dedicated to bringing innovation into the sports industry in the region and I’m confident that this partnership will accelerate this process significantly for all three parties.”