ONE Championship signs MOU to bring potential live events to Qatar by end of 2023

ONE Championship and Media City Qatar (MCQ) will team up to bring live martial arts events to Qatar, potentially by the end of 2023.

The Singapore-based organization and MCQ signed an MOU earlier this week, eyeing to bring ONE's world-class spectacle to the Middle East.

The MOU is an extension of a strategic partnership that both parties entered last year, which saw them agree to a joint long-term effort to create global content in Qatar across all media entities, including studio productions and cutting-edge broadcasting.

ONE Championship Co-Founder and Group President Hua Fung Teh discussed this historic deal in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Thursday, June 22.

Teh said:

“The first event is expected to be in Doha. And it could happen as soon as this year. I think the timing is something we’re still working on for now. We want to focus on making sure that the first event is successful."

He added:

“It’s a really interesting market for us. It’s a young population and digitally savvy. We’re doing a lot in Qatar, we have a lot of partners, but it’s a window for us into the Middle East market... It’s very close in time zone to Europe. So whatever we do in the Middle East is likely to have relevance for us in Europe as well. The physical events happening in that part of the world will be enjoyed in prime time by our European fans.”

Watch the full interview here:

ONE Championship, founded in 2011, has the Qatar Investment Authority among its investors. The world’s largest martial arts organization has also pushed into the Middle East via a multi-year broadcast partnership with Qatar-owned multinational network beIN Sports.

Apart from that, various episodes of the organization’s upcoming second season of 'The Apprentice: ONE Championship Edition' were also shot in Doha earlier this year.

As such, Teh sees major movement in the Middle East for ONE Championship into the end of next year:

“There’s a lot of interesting things that I think will happen in the next 12-18 months in that general part of the world.”

Teh added:

“We’ve obviously built deeper and deeper networks in Qatar and that part of the world. It started with ‘The Apprentice’ in Doha, and now we’re gonna continue that expansion with live events.”