What you’ll learn from this report:

This is Niko Partners’ second annual report covering the MENA (Middle East North Africa) region. The MENA games market has quickly emerged as a key growth region for the global video game industry.

To provide a representative overview of Arabic speaking markets, the report focuses on what we call the MENA-3: Saudi Arabia (KSA), the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt. The report includes a comprehensive market model and 5-year forecast through 2026 by games segment, key data on game publishers, games rankings, growth drivers, and trends. This includes details on esports, product distribution, payments, financial transaction events, regulations, and qualitative and quantitative analysis on gamer demand, spending, and behavior, with gamer behavior based off a survey of 1,126 gamers across the three countries.

هذا التقرير متوفر باللغة الإنجليزية. إذا كنت مهتم بالحصول على نسخة باللغة العربية برجاء التواصل معنا.

Key takeaways from the analysis:

• MENA-3 games revenue is estimated to be $1.8 billion in 2022 rising to $2.8 billion in 2026 at a 5-year CAGR of nearly 10%, and 56% higher than the value at the end of 2022
• MENA-3 gamers are estimated to number 67.4 million in 2022, rising to 87.3 million in 2026 at a 5-year CAGR of nearly 6% indicating ARPU will rise over time
• Egypt has the largest gaming population and is the fastest growing market in the MENA-3 region. Saudi Arabia is the largest market by games revenue and is considered the gaming powerhouse of the region, while the UAE has the highest ARPU of the three markets
• Growth will be driven by mobile gaming, public and private sector investment and esports, and likely to catapult the region alongside global esports giants such as Singapore and China
• 76% of gamers in the MENA-3 region are under the age of 35, with Egypt having a significantly higher percentage of gamers under 25 years old—who are considered digital natives—compared to Saudi Arabia and UAE
• 73% of gamers in MENA-3 engage with esports in some capacity such as watching esports content, playing esports games or competing in amateur or professional tournaments