DUBAI // Saeed Hareb, the Secretary-General of the Dubai Sports Council, said the emirate intends to bring the 2018 Asian Beach Games to the UAE.
Hareb, who recently returned from Thailand, where he watched the UAE take four gold medals at this year’s games, said Dubai will bid to host the 2018 showcase.
“For the first time, I can reveal we will aim to bring the 2018 Asian Beach Games here,” Hareb said. “We have wonderful beaches and numerous facilities that we leverage in organising distinctive sports events at the global level.”
He said the city already hosts 400 events per year and was keen to stress that bringing tourists to Dubai was a strategy that had been in place for decades, citing high-profile football matches played – sometimes on sand – in the 1970s, including Santos of Brazil and Liverpool.
Meanwhile, JB Bernstein, an American sports agent who boasted Barry Bonds among his clients, announced he will follow up the success of his Million Dollar Arm movie project with a new venture entitled Million Dollar Bat.
In the former, Bernstein travels to India in search of cricketers whose talents would enable them to be honed into baseball players. The story became a Disney movie.
Bernstein’s new venture will look to parachute an American baseball player into Indian cricket, with the winner of the US-based talent search eligible to play for an IPL franchise next year.
Noting the crossover in the two sports, Bernstein said: “I’m confident we’ll find ourselves a US-born IPL star.”
Follow us on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE
