Designing a Scalable Sports Booking & Community Platform Across MENA
Simplifying how people discover, book, and play sports—while empowering venue owners to grow Malaeb is a sports booking and community platform operating across Bahrain and the GCC, enabling players to book stadiums, join matches, organize teams, and participate in leagues—while providing stadium owners with tools to manage bookings and operations. The platform supports football, padel, basketball, tennis, volleyball, and more, serving both players and venue owners through mobile apps and a full web experience.
When I joined Malaeb as a part-time Product Designer, the product had already launched but was struggling with usability issues—especially around booking flows, navigation clarity, and overall experience consistency.
Users reported:
Difficulty completing bookings
Too many steps and unclear actions
Heavy reliance on the mobile app for first-time users
Fragmented experience across features
At the same time, Malaeb was scaling across markets and needed a product foundation that could grow with it.
The Challenge
Reduce friction in the booking flow, the most critical business action
Improve discovery of nearby stadiums and available slots
Support both players and stadium owners with clear, scalable UX
Remove the dependency on app-only booking to improve acquisition
Design for multiple sports, markets, and use cases without overwhelming users
The Solution
We re-designed Malaeb’s experience end-to-end, focusing on clarity, speed, and scalability.
Key outcomes included:
Simplifying the booking flow into a single, streamlined step
Redesigning stadium listing, details, and availability selection
Introducing add-ons and upfront payment options within booking
Making notifications actionable and meaningful
Improving onboarding to understand player intent and goals
Designing a full web platform from scratch (IA → flows → UI), enabling users to book without downloading the app
Creating Super League, a tournament and league system (web + mobile) with teams, rankings, schedules, and leaderboards
The result was a cohesive ecosystem that supports casual players, competitive communities, and venue operators alike.
Outcome
Malaeb evolved from a difficult-to-use booking app into a scalable sports platform that:
Reduced booking friction and improved completion rates
Enabled web-based acquisition without forcing app downloads
Supported rapid growth across multiple GCC markets
Strengthened Malaeb’s position as the largest sports booking community in the region
Today, the platform supports:
1,440+ registered stadiums
30,000+ players
10,000+ matches created
