Vladimir Burdun: turning sporting dreams into reality in the UAE

DUBAI: Few individuals have experienced — or contributed to — the growth of Dubai’s sporting industry in recent decades quite like Vladimir Burdun.

The 52-year-old Serb moved to the UAE in 1995, a time when the Dubai Rugby Sevens was still played on sand, the Dubai Tennis Championships was two years old, and the first Dubai World Cup was still a year away.

Today he is the founder and CEO of Emirates Sports, which oversees a sports promotion company and hotel, as well as being president of the World Strongman Federation.

Burdun, a karate competitor in his youth, is steeped in combat sports and is also director of development at the Serbian Boxing Federation.

He moved to Dubai when a group of friends were setting up a trading company in the city and needed an English translator. He jumped at the opportunity.

“They wanted to sell marble, so I came to the UAE and I found my first local partner. His name was Mohammad Galadari,” said Burdun. “Other businesses were a marble company and a Russian restaurant.

“It was 1995. Only brands like Pizza Hut and other big names were here. But you could not find proper dining with entertainment, so we started that. Even now our group still owns some restaurants.

“But this is one of my hated businesses,” Burdun said, laughing, because of the time involved in running a restaurant.

His true passion was sports and he was soon dipping his toes into an industry that was on the verge of exploding in the UAE.

“I’ve been a sports guy all my life,” he said. “Even when I was involved only in the other businesses, there was always a possibility to be involved in sport. I’m a pioneer of martial arts in the Middle East. I was the first person to bring martial arts here. Thai boxing, kickboxing professional competitions. I was the first to organize professional MMA or boxing events in the UAE. And we did it at the beginning of the 2000s.”

In 2003, Burdun opened his first martial arts academy and, by 2011, had 18 clubs across the city.

He also partnered with David Skidmore, founder of the Dubai Rugby Sevens, and the two went on to establish white-collar boxing with the Transguard Group.

After the establishment of the Dubai Sports Council in 2005, the number of sporting activities and competitions mushroomed, and Burdun points out that last year alone more than 1,170 official events took place.

As president of the World Strongman Federation, he set up the brand’s first UAE event in 2016.

“We want to grow (Strongman) and we want it to be an Olympic sport in future.”

Burdun is sitting in his apartment at the Emirates Sports Hotel in Dubai Sports City, which is also home to five professional football clubs from the UAE’s second tier, as well as many visiting athletes. A short walk away, a new ice rink is being built, another sign of the growth of ice hockey in the country.

The biggest surge in business came after the pandemic, he said.

“People understood that a healthy life will give them an opportunity to fight against different type of diseases.”

Accessibility to fitness facilities is all-important, according to Burdun.

“(Almost) every building here has a gym,” he said. “And the professional gyms are run by professional people. I think the number of coaches who work here is one of the highest in the world in relation to the number of people living in the city. I would say that the UAE is a very, very healthy destination.”

Today, much of Burden’s attention is devoted to ice hockey, a sport he has been involved in since 2010.

“I wanted snow, I wanted winter,” he said. “You miss home.”

However, he points out that the UAE’s first ice hockey team was established, incredibly, in 1994 at Al-Nasr Leisureland.

“A group of pilots from North America working for Emirates wanted to skate, so they established the first ice hockey team. Now, if you look at the city of Dubai, we have four ice rinks.

“We are building the fifth one. Imagine, this is the middle of the desert and we have five ice rinks in one city.”

The Emirates Hockey League was founded in 2009 by the UAE’s Winter Sports Federation and the Emirates Olympic Committee, and is governed by the International Ice Hockey Federation.

Burdun said that ice hockey is a demanding sport when it comes to logistics.

“To play one game, you need at least two teams, and two teams have to be at least 10 people each. You need an ice arena, changing rooms, you need lots of equipment. It is one of the most complicated sports, but when people start to love it, you start to love it with all your heart,” he said.

“We believe that ice hockey has a bright future in the Middle East. Because you know that the UAE won three world championships for the last three years, in different divisions. This is unbelievable growth for the country which is in the middle of the desert.

“We are getting strong involvement with different nationalities,” he said. “Can you believe we have Canadians, North Americans, we have Swedish, we have Finnish, we have Danish, we have Slovakians, we have Croatians, we have Russians? We have so many different nationalities which are involved.”

Burdun is particularly keen to develop ice hockey, among other sports, in the Middle East region, particularly Saudi Arabia, which he first visited in 2009.

“We went to the World Combat Games in Riyadh recently and I will tell you that I was totally shocked by the changes which Saudi have done,” he said. “We were watching the final of the 48kg division, a world final, and a Saudi girl was fighting with a girl from Bahrain. This for me was a shock. In just 15 years, girls from the (Gulf) countries are now fighting like tigers, and they had eliminated all the European rivals and they are competing for the medals. They were really good fighters. The world is changing.

“We are looking to expand in the Middle East,” he added. “We cover the full infrastructure in our company, from A to Z. From hotel apartments, food, special treatment, health preparations for the athletes, custom equipment, our own ice rink. Now we are ready to do something for the Middle East. Maybe a GCC league of hockey. Our company can afford to build arenas anywhere. I have a dream to build an arena in NEOM. I know how to do it, and how to set up a team there, and how to attract the world’s best talent.”

Referring to the 2029 Asian Winter Games that will take place in the Tabuk region of Saudi Arabia, he said: “People who come to NEOM will enjoy being there.”

Burdun believes he is fortunate to be in a region that encourages development and called European countries “tortoises” in comparison.

“Instead of trying to put up obstacles, they actually help you get things done here. The good thing about the UAE is because this is a very new country, not everything has been set up like in Europe,” he said, highlighting the support of the government in getting things off the ground.

“That’s how we want to do things in Dubai. We don’t want to wait 50 years for the federation to grow. We want to make it yesterday. We want to achieve results tomorrow. We want our players to be here now. And that’s what we do.”