Moran Cerkez: Lessons from Building Football Academies, Camps and a Digital Platform

Moran Cerkez's view of football academy growth was built through operating work rather than a single marketing channel. His experience spans physical academies in Gothenburg and Stockholm, international camps, acquisition and product development for Ballers App, the creation of Football Marketing Agency and the co-founding of Football Department.

These projects are different, but they produced a common lesson: growth becomes durable only when acquisition, delivery, retention and management information work together.

Building academies in Gothenburg and Stockholm

The Ballers App academies in Gothenburg and Stockholm reached 70 and 240 players respectively at their peak before the complete transition toward the digital platform. Those two locations demonstrated how the management problem changes with scale.

At the beginning, the question is whether enough families know and trust the offer. Local content, referrals, trials and consistent follow-up matter most. As the player base grows, the founder can no longer carry every relationship personally. Communication routines, attendance tracking, coach standards and renewal systems become part of the product.

At the larger Stockholm operation, capacity, staffing and location economics mattered alongside acquisition. Adding players was useful only when pitch use, group sizes, coach cost and service quality remained controlled. That practical progression became the basis for Moran's four phases of academy scaling.

Acquisition must connect to the first session

Marketing performance is often reported at the enquiry. An academy experiences performance at the paid enrolment and retained player. Moran's operating approach therefore follows the whole journey: ad or referral, enquiry, response, trial booking, attendance, enrolment and continued participation.

A slow response can waste a good campaign. A confusing arrival can waste a booked trial. Weak onboarding can waste an enrolment. This is why FMA's academy work extends beyond content into follow-up, retention and management systems.

The CRM process in the video is not valuable because of a particular tool. Its value is that every family has an owner and a next action, and managers can see where interest is being lost.

Camps around the world

International camps add a different challenge. Demand may come from families unfamiliar with the organizers, while delivery involves venues, coaches, travel, schedules and local expectations. The campaign and event must describe the same experience.

Moran helped organize a camp in Sweden with Ballers App. The footage below provides direct evidence of the environment and people involved rather than relying only on a written claim.

A credible camp campaign communicates age groups, dates, coaching format, inclusions and the next step. It should not imply guaranteed selection or a professional outcome. Once registration begins, operational communication becomes part of marketing: timely information builds trust, while last-minute uncertainty damages it.

Turning Ballers App into a digital academy

Moran was responsible for setting up the acquisition system and contributing to business and product development for Ballers App as it evolved into a digital academy. The platform reached more than 300 active paying members.

A digital academy has different economics from a physical location but the same core test: does the member receive enough recurring value to remain? Content cannot be a random library. It needs a clear progression, useful feedback and a reason to return.

The shift also expanded the potential audience beyond one city. Acquisition could reach players across markets, but that created a greater need for clear positioning and a product that delivered consistently without Moran being present in every session.

Ballers-related work also brought Moran into projects with players including Raphael Varane, Joselu Mato, Warren Ganna and Ivan Rakitic. These experiences strengthened the importance of real football context in product and content decisions, but prominent names are not a substitute for member value. A digital academy must still help an ordinary paying player understand what to do next.

What the physical-to-digital transition taught

The transition did not mean physical academy lessons became irrelevant. Instead, the digital product had to preserve their strongest elements: structure, repetition, coaching credibility, progress and community.

Digital delivery offers leverage because one piece of training content can serve many members. It also removes natural accountability. A player attending a pitch has a fixed place and time; a digital member can postpone indefinitely. Product design and communication must therefore create a practical rhythm without pretending an app can reproduce every benefit of in-person coaching.

Building Football Marketing Agency

Football Marketing Agency now works with dozens of academies across 20+ locations and different stages of growth. The range is important. Advice suitable for a 30-player founder-led academy can be harmful to a 200-player operation.

At under 50 players, FMA normally emphasizes a clear offer, local demand and fast trial follow-up. From 50–100, it adds onboarding and retention routines. From 100–200, management needs CPL, CPA, facility and coach cost per player, lifetime value and location profitability. Beyond 200, the priority shifts toward leadership, capacity, new offers and a model suitable for another location or franchise.

That stage-specific approach is explained in what a specialist academy marketing and management agency does.

Building Football Department

Moran also co-founded Football Department, a platform designed to connect elite clubs with elite staff. The network grew from zero to more than 1,000 verified members in under four months. Members have included coaches, physiotherapists and analysts with experience at organizations including Barcelona, Porto, Benfica, Al Nassr, Al Hilal, Dinamo Zagreb and New York Red Bulls.

The project addressed a market problem Moran had observed: high-quality staff opportunities and candidates were fragmented across personal networks. A focused platform could make discovery and connection more direct. The separate Football Department case study explains the operating lessons without implying that network membership is an endorsement by any named club.

Lessons Moran applies today

Across these projects, five principles recur:

1. Solve the current stage. Acquisition, retention, economics and leverage become priorities at different moments.
2. Connect marketing to operations. A lead has value only when the academy follows up and delivers well.
3. Measure the whole journey. Followers and clicks cannot replace trials, paying members and retention.
4. Document before expanding. A second location or franchise should reproduce a system, not a founder's improvisation.
5. Use proof responsibly. Real footage, transparent numbers and clear limitations create stronger trust than inflated claims.

The public Instagram post above is embedded from Moran's official account. Together with the videos, it gives readers a direct route to the person behind the work.