As the first person in the UK to set up a business focused on pickleball, Sam Basford’s timing could not have been better.
The sport has undergone something of a boom in 2023, with record numbers of players at the English Open in June, and the same expected at the English Nationals in October.
SB Pickleball was launched at the start of the year, and Sam has since been criss-crossing the UK, helping to set up events and hold coaching sessions for pickleball players of all standards.
“Really inventive!”, Sam says, laughing at his choice of name.
“Obviously the growth has been huge this year, and at the time, there wasn’t a lot of organised events beyond the ones we’ve had for a couple of years, so I just wanted to increase the availability of all that,” he says.
The decision to take a leap of faith and set up the business was actually a fairly easy one for Sam: “I was fresh out of uni, hating my choice of degree, and so what’s the worst that can happen? If I do it for a couple of years and it fails, then so be it, I’ll have to get a proper job.
“So this is a prime time to take the risk and see what happens – so far it’s gone really well.”
Much of his time is spent in the far reaches of the country, helping to provide coaching and sessions for some of the more isolated communities of pickleball players.
“I’ve been to Newcastle twice, Norwich, Canterbury, Southampton, I’ve been to the darkest depths of Cornwall and I’ve been to Anglesey. It’s amazing, because those people are often the ones who feel a little bit more deserted from everything else that’s going on in pickleball.”
Sam first came across the sport in 2016 and found himself immediately hooked.
“We went along and got beaten up by some 60 and 70-year-olds, so I was low after that!” he recalls. “I don’t really know why I was so excited about it, I think it was just because it was something pretty much no-one else had ever done.”
He then became involved with Pickleball England, helping to set up the first ever English Open tournament and eventually becoming regional director for the West Midlands in 2019.
Now juggling that role with his work for SB Pickleball, it is a hectic life for Sam.
“There is no average day,” he says. “One day I’ll be on court for seven hours coaching, then the next day I’m doing what feels like arts and crafts, making magnets and stickers for festivals.
“I like this because it’s different every single day, if it’s a bit of coaching or a zoom meeting, or a phone call, or I’m driving somewhere, it’s always different”.
Sam is still taken aback by the speed of the sport’s growth: “It has surprised me. Not that it’s grown, I expected that to happen, but a few years down the line.”
However, he does have some concerns about whether supply will keep up with the ever-increasing demand for pickleball facilities.
“We’re going to hit a problem very soon of where we can actually play.
“It’s quite difficult when you’re trying to start somewhere new. I do think there will be a fairly big flood of private investment in the UK, and I think if that happens, we’ll keep seeing that kind of growth continue, but it’s pretty much purely down to that.”
Should the growth of the sport continue as it has done in 2023, Sam and SB Pickleball look to be in the perfect position to help more and more communities build themselves up, all around the UK.
