Kooora.com: the passion that turned into a deal worth over USD 25 million deal

Did you ever think that you could potentially turn a hobby into a multi-million-dollar project?

It wasn’t very easy for Khalid A Doseri to imagine when he launched his website Kooora in 2002 as a sports platform that aggregated global sports news for the latest leagues and tournaments across different types of sports, with a focus on football. During the first few years Khalid managed the website entirely on his own and worked on building a solid foundation for the first dedicated sports platform in the middle east.

Ten years later, Kooora achieved unparalleled success in the region, selling for over USD 25 million, with Khalid expanding the operations of his website and building a team of 80 members by 2015.

“For a very long time, Kooora was a one-man show. I was doing everything starting from day-to-day work to management. But during the past few years the website became a full business venture.” Khalid said in a Reuters interview. The increase in Kooora’s audience and business activities mandated its transformation from a platform managed by one person to a company run by a team of experts and specialists in technology, editing, visual and written content creation, as well as team of journalists that provided the latest scoops in sports from around the globe in real-time to maintain Kooora’s competitiveness.

Kooora consistently maintained its position among the most visited websites in the MENA region over the past few years, coming in the fourth place as per the latest Forbes report for the most visited websites in MENA, exceeding 115.9 million visitors in a year. The website topped the same list in 2017, taking over a number of popular websites such as Sabq and MBC.

Sports activities were significantly impacted by the pandemic, as many tournaments and sports events were canceled or postponed. During these challenging times, Khalid continued to motivate his team to increase their efforts in finding stories and news so that they could continue to be proactive, which is what helped Kooora maintain its forefront position among sports websites in the Middle East, while many others went through significant decreases in traffic. Being a tech-based project also helped the Kooora team seamlessly transition into remote work and maintain communication between team members and journalists based in different locations without being affected by travel and quarantine restrictions brought on by the pandemic. This seamless transition helped the website increase its visitors and audiences by 25% when sports activities were back in action.

Kooora’s continued success captured the attention of global leader in football media, FootballCo, which went on to acquire the website in a deal worth over USD 25-million . As a result, Kooora’s operations will be moved to Saudi Arabia and merged with GOAL, which is also owned and managed by FootballCo.

The website currently has 25 million users and covers over 42 different sports. Following the FootballCo acquisition, the number of users is forecasted to reach 640 million monthly users.

Commenting on the acquisition, Khalid said: “I take great pride in establishing Kooora.com and all the success the platform achieved. We worked tirelessly since launch to ensure that Kooora maintains its position as the leading sports news platform in the region, and I look forward to the seeing the lengths it will go as part of FootballCo.”

Kooora’s success did not come from nothing. It was cultivated through multiple factors:

• Meticulous care and consistent attention to all details in the project as well as continuous drive for growth and development
• Maintaining speed, accuracy, and objectivity when publishing news and articles, which is a cornerstone of media and communications work
• Utilizing market and customer behavior research to provide a tailored and engaging user experience that increases website traffic and maintains current users
• Expanding the target market by providing more language options, subscription models, ads and more
• Expanding the team and depending on local and international journalists to ensure up-to-date and timely content production
• The tech-based nature of the project allows for greater growth potential and enhanced productivity with less investment, as well as the ability to source content creators, journalists, and tech specialists remotely from anywhere in the world and coordinate between them to develop evergreen and diverse content

Looking at the entrepreneurial world there are a lot of businesses that started off as hobbies and then grew to become successful companies by effectively utilizing resources, actively seeking growth opportunities, developing solutions that catered to market gaps, finding niche areas to tap into and pursuing local and international expansions to garner more development and success.

Furthermore, utilizing suitable technological solutions such as automation, management systems and online communication in business whether tech-based or not, can drive positive impact in terms of productivity and quality.

Opportunities for growth are plenty and they come up every day especially with ongoing changes that reshaped the market, expanding it to cater to more innovators and that are working to turn their passions into viable and profitable business ventures. Will you be one of them?