Where Are They Now: Aryan Mehr – CEO and Founder at FC Motivate

UCFB graduate Aryan has been talking to us about his career in sports media since graduating, founding a platform which has gained nine billion views.

Aryan Mehr, who studied BA (Hons) Football Business and Finance at UCFB, founded FC Motivate while still in his first year studying with us, and has seen the organisation go from strength to strength.

FC Motivate is a platform which “helps inspire the next generation of footballers to reach their next level,” by being a voice for that generation.

Aryan, a former professional footballer himself for Crawley Town and the Iranian National Team, spoke about what inspired him to create the platform.

“I was a professional footballer. I know the pain points of footballers,” he said.

“They don’t have access to high-level football training, and if you want to train for one hour, you pay £100. So, the problem we were solving was affordable training for aspiring footballers.

“It’s football training app, and we also work with the biggest brands and clubs at the same time through brand partnerships and campaigns that we work on.”

FC Motivate works as media partners alongside organisations such as Juventus FC, FC Como and Borussia Dortmund.

Aryan founded FC Motivate while at UCFB, where one of his lecturers encouraged him to apply for the annual UCFB Entrepreneurship Award Scheme, a competition he ended up winning.

“I showed the panel at the time we had 300,000 subscribers, over 100,000 followers on Instagram,” Aryan said, “and I showed them where the idea was, where I wanted it to get to.

“Brendan was fascinated, and I ended up winning the competition. And then he said that lots of people win this competition and they end up not taking action, but that I should go all the way.

“It was something that stuck with me and just never looked back really. And just every time I try to go to the next level.”

Speaking about the success of FC Motivate since he founded the platform, he said: “We have 3.1 million followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok; 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube, around one million followers on Instagram and one million followers on TikTok.

“We get around 300 million views across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube a month. We reach around 100 million accounts monthly. And just Instagram alone, we get around 200 million views. And one of our videos hit 35 million views on YouTube. We have over a total view number of like two billion views or so, and when it comes to Instagram, I think last one we did had around 50 million views or so. It’s insane.

“It gathered lots of app downloads and everything else, so we really cracked the code, and that just didn’t happen overnight.

“I have a strong team behind me and credit to them because they always say you’re only as good as your team, right? And yeah, that’s something I would definitely say.”

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