Soccer World Cup has kick started in Brazil and the next one month will keep billions of fan across the globe shuttle to and fro between high waves of enthrallments and disappointments.  Nevertheless, this mega event of sports is not just about high voltage matches, where legions of fans across the globe cheer for their favorite sports team. The event makes a tremendous business sense as well, be it in the form of selling of tickets, broadcast rights or offering gift vouchers, combo deals and merchandises.

It is quite obvious that, Dubai with one of the world’s youngest and fashionable populace cannot remain enclosed from this high intensity event. The different communities living in UAE, Arabs, Europeans, South and East Asians, Africans; all are expected to be highly involved in the game. One of the significant commercial façade of the game in UAE involves large scale retail activities, capitalizing on the direct emotional konnect, which soccer invokes in the thousands of its fan living in the emirate.

Given the fervor in the city, Dubai based market research and feasibility study advisory Research Konnection, has conducted an online survey to evaluate the impact of the mega event as it has great impact on food retail, especially Restaurants, Sports Bars and Shisha joints in the city.

The given analysis has been produced based on an online survey conducted on 570 young respondents aged 18-35, living in Dubai. The respondents comprised of three major ethnic groups, European, Asian (Primarily Indians, Pakistanis, Srilankans and Filipinos) and Arab. The survey has also been complemented with some face to face interviews conducted with managers of food retail outlet in Dubai.