Saudi ticketing app webook plans European expansion

• Saudi Arabia market leaders
• European expansion
• Long-term IPO expectation

Riyadh-based Webook, which describes itself as Saudi Arabia’s largest booking platform for events and experiences, says it is expanding beyond the Middle East into Europe to tap a growing market for ticketing.

Set up in 2016 under the name Hala Yalla, Webook initially focussed as a service to book football pitches, before expanding to include events, hospitality and spectator sports. It says it has sold 10 million tickets and has eight million unique users.

Building on its expanded presence in the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain, the closely held company is extending its reach to the UK, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, co-founder and chief operating officer Farrukh Bandey, tells AGBI.

“Global expansion is very important,” Bandey says. The company aims to go public within three to five years, he says.

Webook opened an office in Dubai this month and says that the UAE will be its second most important market this year.

Entertainment is a growing business in the largest Arab economy and wider Gulf region. Saudi Arabia has changed significantly since Mohammed bin Salman, then aged 32, became crown prince in 2017 and de facto ruler, after a series of kings in their seventies and eighties.

Half Saudi Arabia’s population of 20 million citizens is under the age of 30. Back then, women were not allowed to drive, cinemas were banned, and restaurants were segregated into males and family. No longer. 

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In 2016, the Saudi government set up the General Entertainment Authority to support growth in the domestic entertainment industry and raise the sector’s value in the economy to $23 billion by 2030, in line with targets set in the country’s Vision 2030 economic and social development strategy.

“It was very much that we were in the right place at the right time,” says Bandey, of the company’s creation in 2016.

Webook now facilitates ticketing for large-scale events such as the Saudi Arabia Grand Prix, the Fifa Club World Cup, tourism experiences for Visit Saudi, and more than 90 percent of the Saudi Premier League. It also wants to secure contracts for the 2030 World Cup.

Expanding to the UK, the world’s third-largest online ticketing market worth $4.3 billion in 2022, will not be easy, says Bandey.

Webook wants to secure contracts to facilitate ticketing in the English Premier League.

“There’s a lot of entrenched competition there,” he says. “You’ve got your major players, your Ticketmasters, which have events and venues tied to them.”