Lebanese App Lets Users Book Coaches Across 80+ Sports

Sydney Sweeney's Novig ad was meant to promote a sports betting platform. Lebanese sports coaching app Click Coach had other ideas. Its parody, featuring content creator Joy Habib, has racked up 30.5 million views and 7.6 million likes on TikTok as of October 19, 2026.

But behind the viral video is a startup trying to solve a problem familiar to anyone who has ever wanted to try a new sport: finding the right coach.

Marc Fares, Click Coach’s founder, knows the struggle from both sides. A swimmer and swimming coach himself, he was constantly asked by friends and family whether he knew a personal trainer in a particular city, a swimming coach who could come to their home or someone who could help them get started in a sport.

The problem became harder to ignore when he began coaching at a residential compound in Brumana, where several families had pools but struggled to find instructors. More than 20 parents told him they had spent between six months and a year searching for a coach.

“If you have a pool, a court or a gym, and you want a coach to come to you, there was no way to find one easily,” Fares says. People had to contact academies individually, ask around and hope they could find someone suitable.

“Why don’t we have, like we have delivery apps, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, all these apps where everything is at our fingertips? Why doesn’t coaching and sports become at our fingertips?”

The idea took shape in 2024, while Fares was completing his dentistry studies. After around two years of development, Click Coach launched in March 2026, bringing independent coaches and people looking to train together on one platform.

The app currently covers more than 80 sports, from swimming, football and basketball to more niche activities. Users can search by sport and location, compare coach profiles, check qualifications and reviews, and request sessions without having to contact multiple academies to find the right fit.

Training does not have to happen at a dedicated facility, either. Depending on the coach, sessions can take place at their own location, at the user's home or online. Users can also add family members to their accounts and book sessions on their behalf, making the platform useful for parents organising lessons for their children as well as individuals looking to train.

For Fares, though, the point is to give people more information about the person they are trusting to coach them.

“Even when you call the academy, you don’t have the certificates and the experience of the coach there,” he says. “You might put your kids there, and your kid just doesn’t like the coach, or the coach injures your kid. You didn’t know anything about the coach before you went there.”

He saw the impact of a poor coaching experience with his own sister, who disliked swimming after an instructor struggled to handle children. After switching coaches, she grew to love the sport.

“This is why I made it coach-centred, because even if you’re in an academy, it is the coach who will matter,” he tells SceneSports.

That focus also addresses a problem on the supply side. Coaches can promote themselves on social media, but building a following does not necessarily mean reaching people actively looking for their services. Someone searching for a swimming instructor might find academies through Google or stumble across a coach's Instagram page, but there is no guarantee either will lead to the right match.

“There is no searching platform for coaches where we bring them leads,” Fares says. “It’s like Google for coaches, because Google doesn’t help coaches.”

Click Coach lets coaches build profiles around their sports, experience and qualifications, giving prospective clients a way to discover and compare them. Coaches can also list their training locations, set their own session prices and manage bookings and schedules through the app.

“What we really fixed is that if someone is searching for you, they will find you. It’s not that they have to see your ad on Instagram and might be interested or not. It’s directly a searching platform.”

Fares wanted that search function to cover as many sports as possible from the start. While he was advised to focus on one sport in one city before expanding, he believed that limiting the selection would undermine the point of the app.

“My only goal was that if you need a frisbee coach, you will find the frisbee coach. If you need a tennis coach, you will find a tennis coach,” he says. “If I say all sports, then you have to find all sports.”

Delivering on that promise was not straightforward. The requirements for booking a swimming lesson differ from those for finding a physiotherapist or nutritionist, and each sport brings its own needs.

“It’s not as straightforward as booking a taxi or booking delivery,” Fares says. “If it’s football or tennis or physiotherapy or nutrition, each sport has its own needs and features that it wants.”

The platform is designed to accommodate a wide range of goals, from parents looking for lessons for their children to athletes seeking strength and conditioning support, people preparing for bodybuilding competitions and older adults looking for rehabilitation.

“Any goal, you just write the goal into the search of the app, and the app will give you, based on the keywords that you use, the right coach that you want.”

The early numbers suggest the model is gaining traction. Click Coach, according to Fares, recorded more than 10,000 bookings through the app, representing around $300,000 in booking value, in its first five months. More than 1,300 approved coaches had joined during that period, while the team grew from Fares working alone to more than 10 people across marketing, development and product.

One of his biggest surprises was how quickly the platform reached different parts of Lebanon.

“I didn’t think I would, in five months, be able to have coaches in all of Lebanon,” he says. “One day I decided to open the map and see random cities in Lebanon that I didn’t even know I had coaches there, and I found coaches in the south, the north, across Lebanon.”

For now, Click Coach is free for both trainees and coaches, with no subscription fee or commission on coaching sessions. Coaches set their own prices, and payments are currently arranged directly between the coach and the client.

Fares plans to introduce a subscription model for coaches, academies and sports businesses in the future, but says the priority is to establish the platform as a reliable source of new clients first. He says more than 300 coaches have already gained new clients simply by listing their services.

“I was a coach, and I believe that unless the coaches are really benefiting from this app, I can wait to take the subscription.”

The business is also developing a rewards system intended to encourage users to keep training. Completed sessions earn users points and experience, helping them progress through levels and unlock vouchers from partner brands. Rewards available through the programme include offers on sportswear, equipment and other products.

The idea comes from Fares’ belief that the effort people put into sport deserves recognition, even when they are not professional athletes or social media personalities.

“No one rewards you for training eight times per week if you are not a public figure,” he says. “The idea was that we should reward people for how much they train.”

He describes the rewards as “a mini sponsorship”, with brands able to reach people who are already engaged in sport and users receiving something tangible in return for their consistency.

Although Click Coach started in Lebanon, Fares built the app so that people could sign up from other countries rather than restricting it to a local audience.

People can use the platform to search for coaches in cities including London and Rio de Janeiro, but global accessibility does not yet mean Click Coach has an established coaching network in those markets. Building that network remains part of its longer-term expansion plans.

“We made it scalable in a way that anyone, anywhere in the world, can sign up on the application,” he says. “But of course, it’s step by step.”

Future plans include expanding the platform to accommodate more structured sporting environments, including teams, schools, academies and classes. That could broaden its role beyond individual coaching sessions, allowing more of the people and organisations involved in sport to connect through one platform.

For now, the challenge is to turn early growth into a sustainable business while continuing to attract coaches and users across more sports and locations.

The viral TikTok may have introduced millions of people to Click Coach, but Fares is betting on something more enduring than a clever parody: making it easier to find the right coach, and giving more coaches a way to find the people who need them.