If you’re a UFC Arabia subscriber then you probably already know they’re shutting down the service at the end of the month. UFC Arabia was the best way to watch UFC fights if you live in Kuwait (or the GCC). The service and features were great and the price was cheap, like 2KD a month and it included pay per view events which cost around 25KD each in the US.
But, they’re now shutting down the service and telling everyone to sign up to STARZPLAY, the new home of UFC Arabia.
I signed up to it and watched the last PPV event (UFC 299) on STARZPLAY and it SUCKED. I had two major issues:
First issue, you can’t rewind a live event. Most of the pay per view events start in the middle of the night and by the time I wake up around 7AM they’re nearly done. What I used to do with UFC Arabia is get on, press play, and quickly rewind to the start of the event so I don’t see any spoilers. I can even pause after rewinding so I can then make my coffee, sit down and start watching the fights.
With STARZPLAY you can’t do that, you have to watch live where the event is and you can’t rewind. So if I get on and it’s in the middle of the fight it’s like tough luck, I can’t do anything about it except maybe just not watch the fights in the morning as they’re happening and instead wait till after work or something.
The second issue I had was that midway through the fights the STARZPLAY video stream died and didn’t come back. Thankfully UFC Arabia was still functioning so I just got on that and continued to watch the event there.
The whole STARZPLAY interface also sucks and it’s just too busy with so much going on. I tried watching old fights but it wouldn’t even let me change the commentary language, so I was forced to watch it in Arabic. It’s just a horrible experience compared to UFC Arabia.
So basically, if you’re a UFC fan living in the GCC you’re pretty much out of luck now.
10 replies on “No More UFC Arabia”
Good heads up. I am forwarding your thoughts on this to their Production team. Middle East is finally a booming MMA market & it needs to be right.
Sigh. And we just came out of a multi-year stretch where there was no legal way to watch an English F1 broadcast in the entire MENA region (population: 650 million). Why is the bar set so low…
Oh and I don’t care how many years its been, STARZPLAY will never stop sounding like an adult website.
Yes UFC Arabia was criminally cheap too. Just 5$ for a monthly subscription which included all the PPV.
Starz is still the same price, but if feels like you’re getting a lot less.
I had the same issue with the WWE Network when it got disabled for the Middle East, and Shahid got the rights for all things WWE (Including all the PPVs). The Shahid app frequently has weird issues, and several times I cannot even get the PPV to play on the day it aired
Now I just use a VPN and watch those via the Peacock App, as they have the USA rights (and it is cheaper than Shahid)
Don’t tell uncle Dana on me I guess…
I use starzplay to watch serie a italian football and I hate it. They even have ads when you start streaming even though this is a paid subscription. TOD is so much better especially when it comes to rewinding live events.
UFC arabia still withdrew the subscription fee from me 3 days ago even though they stopped their services in march, and still didn’t refund me. They could’ve waited to sell to starzplay after ufc 300, but no they had to do it right before ufc 300, shame.
Did you get the refund.
They debit from me also.
Torrent is the best way