Dubai’s Roads Turn Matchday-Ready with New President’s Cup Campaign
The President’s Cup Final 2026 has officially arrived on Dubai’s OOH landscape through a new digital billboard campaign promoting the highly anticipated final between Al Ahli and Al Jazira. With an installation that uses one of the most congested highway intersections in the city, the campaign makes an overhead bridge its billboard and uses it for match-day announcements.
The creative centers around the two competing teams alongside the President’s Cup trophy, immediately framing the match as a major sporting event. The footballers take dramatic positions in front of a darkened background so that their focus would be directed on the illuminated trophy at the center of the composition. In terms of the graphic elements, there is a simple yet clear hierarchy with the team logo first, then the trophy logo, followed by date, stadium, and kick-off.
Contrary to many other sports campaigns, where the visual language is highly dynamic and packed with effects, the campaign by The PGA Tour makes use of a relatively restrained approach. The dark background, which reminds one of cinematography, contrasts well against the bright daytime urban scene of Dubai, ensuring that the billboard does not turn chaotic while making a bold statement.
In addition to using bilingual typography of Arabic and English, which is a very practical move considering the location, key information regarding the the May 22 match day, time, and Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium location is conveyed clearly in several parts of the billboard.
It is also the perfect positioning of the advertisement which makes the billboards highly effective in their campaign. Positioned at an ideal position over the pedestrian walkway over a busy multiple-lane highway, the advertising message will have maximum exposure time when compared to regular road-side billboards. The wide dimensions of the billboard allow the designers to give importance to all the three elements mentioned in the advertisement while maintaining maximum legibility.
The billboard ad in the image above also shows the growing interdependence between sports marketing and outdoor advertising in the UAE region. Instead of being used just as information signs, the billboard ad in this case appears to be used as an indicator for a public sporting event. By repeating the same design on various billboards along the highways of Dubai, the organizers have succeeded in increasing the scale of the event.
The campaign lit up Dubai’s digital screens in the second week of May.
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