In October 2022, it was when taking a run beneath the hazy Emirati morning sun in Dubai Marina that Ben Nichols decided to establish the world’s first padel-dedicated communications consultancy. Why? The Padel Paper explores further.
On that morning run in Dubai, Ben was halfway through his week working as publicist for the Great Britain men’s padel team, a week in which the Christian Medina-Murphy-led side concluded their campaign as the world’s 14th best padel nation.
However, with his contract with the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) drawing to an end, he had reached a proverbial crossroads. In a year in which, in his own words, “Everywhere I turned, I faced padel”, the Brit’s decision to do something that had yet to be done could be traced back to that day.
However, while establishing a marketing communications agency dedicated to the burgeoning sport of padel might have been considered niche or risky by some, to Nichols, it felt like a calling.
“I’ve never been someone to shirk a challenge,” he tells us. “I flew out to the Middle East solo and jobless, aged 25 with a two-month return ticket and barely a penny to my name. That resulted in a two-year tenure as the Chief Press Officer for the ATP and WTA Dubai Tennis Championships.
“I also took the plunge on a senior communications role for an F1 team – quite a jump for someone that couldn’t have distinguished understeer from oversteer.
“I’ve always taken the view from words I remember my father uttering when I was 13 years old – that you grow from being outside of your comfort zone. Operating outside my comfort zone has always brought out the best of me, and so establishing an international PR agency from scratch for a sport that is essentially ‘at scratch’ felt like an absolute no-brainer.”
With plenty of behind-the-scenes work to prepare the company for launch in the final months of 2022, Padel 22 officially launched at the start of January, with Nichols working alongside former Chime Sports Marketing PR pro, Harry Benyon, former NCAA tennis player-turned videographer Jordan Owens and, most recently, ex-Daily Mail Sports Editor, Charlie Skillen.
It has been a pacy six months for Padel 22, who since opening shop have enlisted the likes of New York’s Padel Haus, Great Britain No.1 player Tia Norton and the Pro Padel League (PPL) as clients.
Yet, while 2023 has been a year filled with club launches, engaging influencers with promotional activities and profiling Britain’s top padel talents – from Norton to British men’s No.2 Sam Jones – how did the 39-year-old Briton get there when, just seven years previously, he was working for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in the heat of the Russian state-sponsored doping scandal?
Nichols explains: “It’s been quite a journey. If you’d asked me seven years ago when I was on the front line during the biggest sporting scandal this century that several years later, I’d be running a global communications company for a sport called padel, I’d have laughed it off.
“Yet, if you’d asked me seven years prior to WADA when I was helping PR a brand new Emirates Dubai Rugby Sevens stadium in the middle of the desert that I’d later be the main spokesperson for WADA during the fallout of the Sochi scandal, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
It’s the contrast from the highs of representing WADA on the public stage to the new highs of founding the world’s first padel-dedicated communications agency that jump out, yet to Nichols these experiences haven’t always been positive. Far from it.
“When I reflect on the WADA years [2013 – 2017], I remember so much of it with fondness. To enter that organisation in 2013 without a background in anti-doping and at the tail-end of the US Postal Cycing and Lance Armstrong doping saga that had besieged sport, to, four years later, emerging from my office in Montreal for the final time, post-Russian doping saga, with the scars to show, I felt in many ways, like an entirely different person.”
There were dark times. “The Russian scandal was draining, to put it lightly,” he says. “The WADA media team knew we were witnessing a one-off chapter in our careers. We weren’t government figures or career politicians, yet here we were as the first line of defence for the organisation and the ‘clean sport’ movement, with the Russian state media spin machine on the other side, casting WADA and the anti-doping authorities as ‘the bad guys’.
“As became public through the Fancy Bears athlete data leak, we had our systems hacked through phishing emails, and, personally, on more than one occasion, I had threats via social media and voicemail that, let’s just say were very unnerving and required me to change my number. Whilst those close to me know what I and other colleagues went through during that time, I’ve never opened up about it publicly. It was a low point yet it also brought things into perspective.
“Whilst being a public representative for WADA and standing up for the clean sport cause brought immense pride (and plenty of supportive calls and conversations from friends who were watching the Oscar-winning Netflix movie Icarus), it also led to some testing times that required resilience and a reminder that we, the anti-doping authorities, were on the right side of history.”
He now works at the other end of the spectrum, promoting a buoyant, up-and-coming sport. So what does the Englishman aim to achieve with his new venture, Padel 22?
“It’s pretty simple, really. Padel 22 exists to grow the profile of this hugely exhilarating sport across what I like to call the ‘New Padel World’. In such places as the UK, Australia, Canada, USA and Singapore, this sport is beginning its long journey and it has immense potential to cut through people of all ages and demographics.
“Padel has no baggage, no history [of real length] to work through and while, as with any start-up sector, there are a handful of chancers and cowboys who might leave a poor impression, there are far, far more well-intentioned, driven, genuine passionate padel industry professionals. This sport is well on its way, and I’m excited we’re able to play our part in that.”
