EK send me a POUG offer almost every trip now - the banner headline being "You've been specially selected for an upgrade". Flying recently from RUH to DXB they wanted circa $400 USD for a 90 min flight upgrade from Y -> J (and no alcohol on this flight). My onward flight to IST was marginally better with circa $700 USD being requested for the 4 hour segment.

Given my flight cost was $410 for the entire RUH-DXB-IST return the prices for upgrade were not taken up (and I have an EK Gold card so upgrade offer even less worth it).

BTW - I could have upgraded ONE WAY for 68500 miles - EK has the worst ever FF scheme and recently increased their redemption rates (and for comparison I earnt around 5K miles for this, admittedly cheap, saver fare so would need to fly 14 round trips just for a one way upgrade of less than 6 hours flying)