Sports PR agency MatchFit has unveiled its biggest ever leadership evolution, headlined by the appointment of Caz Nicholls as the agency’s first managing director.
Almost a year after joining MatchFit as a director from the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB), where she served as head of comms, Nicholls has stepped up to become the operational and commercial lead of MatchFit. She will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the agency across both the Manchester and London locations, and will report into co-founders Donald Parish and Will Mitchell.
The move sees Parish and Mitchell each assume the title of chief executive and founder to oversee MatchFit as the industry’s specialist sports PR agency. Parish takes lead responsibility to drive new business development and the expansion of the MatchFit brand, whilst Mitchell will have a critical role powering forward future-proofing, agency special-projects and IP development.
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Since founding in 2019, MatchFit has built a client roster of world-class brands, rightsholders and governing bodies including The FA, Topps, Manchester City, the ECB, LiveScore, EA SPORTS, Asahi and LALIGA. The agency has created award-winning sports work powered by a positioning of absolute specialism across consumer, grassroots and boardroom audiences in sport, and was the third fastest-growing agency in the 2026 PRWeek Top 150 Consultancies report.
The new leadership team is set to significantly unlock MatchFit’s potential to scale and further develop capability to drive industry-leading sports PR work across its two offices. Since joining, Nicholls has sharpened the agency’s audience-first approach, deepening the use of fan and stakeholder insight to guide how creative and channel decisions are made. A key part of this has involved the implementation of MatchFit Scoreboard, the agency’s measurement approach for demonstrating the impact of audience-first campaigns.
Neil Wood has also been promoted to agency director after three years of sustained excellence and growth leading award-winning work with the likes of Topps, Fanatics and Manchester City. He will play a key role shaping MatchFit’s offering for brands and rightsholders operating at the intersection of sport and culture.
Wood joins Cherrelle Jefferson Izod – existing MatchFit director and lead of the Manchester office in reporting in to Nicholls. Since Jefferson Izod’s arrival the Manchester office has grown in headcount and created work for clients including the Rugby Football League, Sheffield City Council (for the World Snooker Championship), and premium beer brand, Asahi.
New MD Nicholls said: “Being given the opportunity by Donald and Will to take MatchFit to its next level of potential is something I’m incredibly honoured and excited about. Having worked both in-house and agency-side, I’ve seen this industry from both perspectives, and I know exactly what makes the difference between good work and truly unparalleled work; it’s the people behind it.
“I want MatchFit to continue to be the place where the best talent is nurtured and developed, and where every member of the team is empowered to create outstanding, audience-first work that drives demonstrable impact. My approach has always been to lead by example, with empathy and a high-support, high-challenge mindset. I’ll be bringing that into everything we do, to ensure that comms is viewed as a genuine strategic partner, not just a channel.”
Chief executive and founder Parrish added: “The world of sport is noisier than ever before, placing an ever-greater premium on the craft of specialist PR to make real impact. In Caz we have a managing director who truly embodies the sense of what it is to be MatchFit from a cultural, mindset and behaviour perspective, and a talent who is best placed to supercharge our work with the best rightsholders and brands in sport.
“With people in love with the craft of PR and inspired by their lives as consumers, fans and grassroots players, we have always been the agency that speaks the language of sport. Now, with our incredible new leadership team, I’ve never been more excited about MatchFit’s future as the leading sports PR agency in the UK.”
In becoming MatchFit’s first MD, Nicholls also joins Parish and Mitchell on the newly-established MatchFit board, which itself is augmented further by the appointment of Nigel Cushion as non-executive director. Cushion joins as a business veteran with more than three decades of experience leading and advising companies at various stages of growth. As the founder of the mentoring enterprise Nelsonspirit, he will be available to mentor all MatchFit staff across London and Manchester, while the agency remains privately owned and founder-led.
