The EdTech sector has no shortage of ambition, yet when you look closely the list of global consumer successes is astonishingly short. Duolingo is the standout. Epic has traction with younger readers, Pingfong owns a slice of early-years edutainment, and BYJU’s, once hailed as the giant, has stumbled. Beyond that, it’s slim pickings. For an industry sitting on billions in potential users that is either a warning or an opportunity. I believe it’s the latter.
I am super excited about Mudita’s GOAL (Go And Learn™) app which has been built to address precisely why so much EdTech falls short. The difference is emotional engagement. Most EdTech products try to manufacture motivation through streaks, progress bars and gamified rewards. They create a habit loop, but it’s a thin one. The truth is that learners, particularly children, don’t sustain engagement through mechanics alone, they sustain it through identity, fandom, and role models. That is the foundation of GOAL: learning because your hero is teaching you, not because an algorithm nudges you.
Skeptics argue that kids don’t use EdTech in this way, pointing out that Duolingo’s largest demographic is 18–24. But look a little deeper and you see that Japanese learners on Duolingo skew heavily young, with 70% aged 13–22.
Duolingo Math, another product in their stable, directly targets the eight-to-fourteen age range. The youth market is not only real, it is active—millions of school-age learners already choose to spend time on platforms like Duolingo. The problem is they are learning from a green owl rather than from Lionel Messi, Shohei Ohtani or LeBron James. When you ask a ten-year-old who they would rather learn from, the answer is obvious.
GOAL has already tested this model with Arsenal, PSG and Manchester City. The pilots focused not on aggressive user acquisition but on proving the distribution model. By riding on official club channels, the app reached tens of thousands of fans at zero advertising cost, a distribution advantage no other EdTech platform can claim.
GOAL achieved early-phase stickiness in the same ballpark as Duolingo’s gold standard, without push notifications, without gamification, and without any paid acquisition. That is a powerful signal of product-market fit.
The distinction is worth underlining. Most EdTech freemium models struggle to convert or retain. Independent benchmarks put average Day-30 retention in education apps around 2%. In contrast, GOAL pilots delivered organic growth, high install-to-download conversion, and strong DAU/MAU ratios, all achieved by linking learning to identity and fandom. When the next phase of content and rewards is layered on top, the trajectory looks clear.
Why does this matter? Because sports fandom follows its own predictable arc. Half of lifelong fandoms are formed by age fourteen, yet ninety percent decline before thirty as life friction sets in (school, work, family, the distractions of adulthood). Clubs know this, but most fan engagement efforts focus on short-term spikes rather than long-term loyalty. By embedding learning into fandom, GOAL keeps young fans connected during the years that matter most. It deepens their knowledge, strengthens their identity as supporters, and builds habits that last beyond the latest highlight reel.
This is a new category: identity-driven learning. It bridges the emotion gap that weakens EdTech and the knowledge gap that limits sports. The result is daily engagement that is both educational and enduring. With a 7–18 target group spanning languages, maths, literacy and wellbeing, and a proven pathway to global distribution through club partnerships, the potential scale is extraordinary.
GOAL has already shown it can convert casual learners into core users. The next phase will demonstrate how far that can go. In a market of 1.9 billion learners and 4 billion sports fans, the opportunity is to reshape how education and fandom converge.
That’s why I believe Mudita’s GOAL app is one of the most exciting EdTech ventures of this decade.