Why sports stars are fleeing to Dubai: The gun robbery fears, 'party' culture and seismic power struggle that's seen everyone from Cristiano Ronaldo and Rio Ferdinand to Ronnie O'Sullivan and Roger Federer flock to the Gulf

There are several reasons why a trend has accelerated around the migration of sportsmen and women to Dubai. One was summed up recently by a well-known former footballer who spent more than a decade in the Premier League.

The gist of it was this: he had paid in the region of £20million in tax and had just learned that bin collection in his part of the north was due to drift from fortnightly to once every three weeks.

There’s more to it than that, of course, but this player, a winner of multiple medals, told us a move to Dubai is now prominent in his thinking.

To follow the learnings of our school geography lessons, we can talk here about push and pull factors. Likewise, about patterns of movement established in the past 15 years that are escalating in their frequency.

In the past couple of months, Rio Ferdinand has made the change in the latest phase of retirement and Ronnie O’Sullivan has done likewise while still active.

They have joined a long list of sporting figures who either reside in the desert city permanently or own property there, which includes Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Roger Federer, Tommy Fleetwood, Patrice Evra, Didier Drogba, Michel Salgado, Clarence Seedorf, Nicolas Anelka, Dwight Yorke and Amir Khan.

Most have stopped competing, but there are plenty of exceptions. James Vince, who was part of the England squad that won the 2019 Cricket World Cup, moved at the start of this year and is using Dubai as a permanent hub from which he travels to his franchise outposts from Australia to Hampshire. Moeen Ali and Alex Hales have done the same.

There are risks attached to this gathering trend, as one expert in this field has outlined to us.

But there are also glaringly obvious reasons for why it is happening – tax-free living primarily, followed by climate. Improved security in an emirate with one of the world’s lowest crime rates was also cited behind the switches made by Vince (separate attacks on his home and car in Hampshire) and Khan (a gunpoint robbery in east London 2022), but there is a gold rush element, too.

The projection from those who operate in Dubai is that many more are on the cusp of following, and in turn they are feeding into a wider political game.

In the bigger picture, that speaks to how sport’s balance of power is shifting ever closer to the Middle East, and in the detail it concerns the acts of one-upmanship between geographical neighbours.

To understand Dubai, you need to appreciate its appetite for change. And its appetite for change is shown by the changes to its skyline.

The local joke is to avoid buying a map because the layout will have changed by the time you’ve handed over your money – images collected from the Dubai Desert Classic golf tournament, or specifically those taken behind the eighth tee at Emirates Golf Club across the past 20 years, do a better job than most of illustrating what that change looks like.

In 2007, Tiger Woods was launching a drive towards 10 skyscrapers, each protruding from the ground like isolated teeth; in 2024, Rory McIlroy was aiming towards an entirely different world, countless towers crammed together. A surgically-enhanced grin for the Instagram era, if we are to torture the metaphor.

That acceleration is being mimicked by the local directive to bring in famous people, including athletes, to sell the impression that Dubai is the place to be. What the latter gain in sunshine and untaxed earnings, the host is reaping in billboard value.

‘It has become a huge growth area,’ said Spencer Hidge, the Dubai-based founder of Premier Sports Network, a global sports marketing agency that facilitates many of the moves in the region.

He told Daily Mail Sport: ‘In the past two years, we have fielded around 200 enquiries from people in sport about relocating here. That ranges from athletes to administrators, support staff and retired pros from a variety of sports who might just want the tax benefit or lifestyle or investment opportunity.

‘But it is also on the conference scene and those tied to the big decisions. A lot of those conversations have migrated here in recent years.

‘The overall surge has been massive. From the playing side, a lot of it is coming from Premier League footballers in either their late 20s or early 30s, looking at either retirement or a last move in the region. We have worked with a number of them.’

The sudden overseas influx of ageing footballers to the Saudi Pro League, following state investment from 2023 onwards, has had a knock-on effect.

The everyday lifestyle restrictions meant a number of those who headed to the Kingdom, such as Steven Gerrard, commuted from the more relaxed surroundings of Bahrain; Neymar had a base in Saudi during his disappointing time at Al Hilal, but also purchased a £43million penthouse in Dubai, less than two hours by plane from Riyadh.

The Palm, a man-made archipelago in the Persian Gulf, has become a go-to spot for relocation, along with the adjacent Dubai Marina (where Federer owns a £13m home), Jumeirah Bay (Cristiano Ronaldo) and the Jumeirah Golf Estates.

A significant loosening on alcohol laws in the past five years has helped reshape Dubai as a party state for the wealthy. O’Sullivan, for one, has indicated that his move there was driven by his wife, the actress Laila Rouass: ‘My wife wasn’t too keen on Sheffield, so she said we either go to Spain or Dubai.’

O’Sullivan has not yet retired from snooker, so intends to utilise Dubai as a base away from its historic footholds in the UK, with the sport having gravitated towards the Far East and Middle East.

Hidge won’t name his clients, but confirmed they include those footballers who followed the money to Saudi Arabia.

‘It’s easy to get your fingers burnt quickly here if you don’t know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Everything is very fast-paced, very commercial, so there are risks. But there is a big draw – education, healthcare, it’s safe and it’s very fashionable for high net-worth individuals. The property market is going through the roof.’

In regards to the latter, a 70 per cent price rise since 2019 has opened the door to boom or bust investments. But there is an interesting dynamic at play, with Dubai, and more broadly the United Arab Emirates, actively pushing to draw in high-rollers.

That has been most conspicuous with the softening of requirements around the so-called Golden Visa, which grants residency between five and 10 years and is now less dependent on an applicant’s financial investment.

A ‘special talent’ category has essentially lowered the barrier to famous individuals who can, presumably, show an appealing face of the city to the world via social media. It might be interpreted as a form of soft power in a part of the globe that is increasingly using sport in its jostling for positions.

‘There are agendas in various places across the Gulf to want high-profile people, including athletes who are living and working in their spaces,’ said Dr Simon Rofe, an expert in sports diplomacy from Leeds University.

‘It's nothing that other governments haven't done in that regard, but there is, on one hand, a push in the region for making a good connection to the domestic audience - an inspirational message around lifestyle to the local population where there might not be so many native domestic sporting role models.

‘But also there's a little bit of showing off to your geographic neighbours, in a way that says, “Look who my friends are”.

'Qatar, for example, are very conscious of showing off who they know in their sporting events, which we have seen with David Beckham. Some of it can be very subtle but deliberate.’

Whether any of that, from tax and Instagram backdrops to sunshine and safer streets, counts for more than the frequency of bin collection is down to the individual.