Player's Lounge

Bur Dubai sports bar with banter-loving crowd Discuss this article

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Disaster struck Bur Dubai-dwelling sports fans when the Player’s Lounge closed its doors. Lively football banter with complete strangers any given day of the week was guaranteed from this Al Raffa watering hole. But after a spot of transfer activity and some pre-season training, the Player’s is back.

With a shift in position to a slightly more central holding role within the Country Club Hotel, the new-look bar wouldn’t look out of place as a swanky premiership Jumeirah hangout. Plush leather sofas and dining booths armed with mini TVs flank either side of the bar, and all available wall space has been taken up by flat screen TVs, as well as two huge projectors.

Sadly, in their eagerness for wall-to-wall sport, the designers only put two toilets in the gents’ washroom, which means you might have to ‘get all Joey Barton’ in order to beat the half time rush for the loo.

Resident band Something Else are on hand most nights belting out some lively cover songs – and can even get people up and onto the danceflooron a lacklustre Monday night. But it’s the sheer variety of sport, such as Aussie rules football, ice hockey, rugby and basketball, screened every night (and football again from September) that guarantees the Player’s Lounge top-flight status next season.

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