Symbol of RCB

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB)

• The Royal Challengers Bangalore abbreviated as RCB are a franchise cricket team based in Bangalore, Karnataka, that plays in the Indian Premier League (IPL). It was founded in 2008 by United Spirits and named after the company’s liquor brand Royal Challenge. Since its inception, the team has played its home matches at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
• The M. Chinnaswamy Stadium is a cricket stadium located in Bangalore, Karnataka. Flanked by the picturesque Cubbon Park, Queen’s Road, Cubbon and uptown MG Road, this five-decade-old stadium is situated in the heart of the city of Bangalore It has a seating capacity of 40,000, and regularly hosts Test cricket, One Day Internationals (ODI), Twenty20 Internationals (T20i) and other First-class cricket matches, as well as musical and cultural events.
• The stadium is the home ground of the Karnataka state cricket team and the Indian Premier League franchise Royal Challengers Bangalore. It is owned by the Government of Karnataka and has been leased out to the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) for a period of 100 years.
• Formerly known as the Karnataka State Cricket Association Stadium, it was later rechristened in tribute to Mangalam Chinnaswamy, who donated land for stadium and served the KSCA for four decades and was also president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) from 1977–1980. It is the first cricket stadium in the world to use solar panels to generate a bulk of the electricity needed to run the stadium. This has been procured as by the “Go Green” initiative of the KSCA.

• In September 2007, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced the establishment of the Indian Premier League, a Twenty20 competition to be started in 2008. The teams for the competition, representing 8 different cities of India, including Bangalore, were put up on auction in Mumbai on 20 February 2008. The Bangalore franchise was purchased by Vijay Mallya, who paid US$111.6 million for it. This was the second highest bid for a team, next only to Reliance Industries’ bid of US$111.9 million for the Mumbai Indians.
• The brand value of Royal Challengers Bangalore was estimated to be ₹595 crore (i.e.) US$83 million in 2019. Vijay Mallya wanted to associate one of his top-selling liquor brands, either McDowell’s No.1 or Royal Challenge with the team. The Royal Challenge was chosen, hence the name RCB.

Logo’s: The logo initially consisted the RC emblem in yellow on a circular red base with the black text “Royal Challengers Bangalore” in standard format surrounding the circular logo. The RC crown emblem with the roaring lion placed on the top of the logo was derived from the original Royal Challenge logo. No significant changes took place in the design of the logo except for the replacement of colour yellow with gold from 2009.

• This logo also had a dotted white circle around the RC emblem. The team also uses an alternate logo for the Game for Green matches where the green plants surround the logo and the text Game for Green is placed below the logo. The logo was redesigned in 2016 with the inclusion of black as a secondary color. The lion emblem in the crest was enlarged and the shield was omitted in the new design.
• In 2020, a new logo was unveiled featuring a bigger lion and the crown returning from the previous logo. The RC emblem was omitted for this crest.

Jersey: The jersey colors of the team in 2008 were red and golden yellow, the same as the unofficial Kannada flag, with player names printed in white and numbers printed in black in the rear. Yellow was eliminated in future seasons and was replaced with gold. Starting from 2010, blue was introduced on the apparel as a tertiary colour. The jersey design saw tweaks every season, major being the one for 2014 where blue dominated over gold. From 2014, the player names and numbers were printed in gold.

• As of 2015, more yellowish shade of gold is being used on the jerseys. The blue was completely eliminated in 2016 and was replaced by black as the third colour in the two versions of the jersey; one for home matches and the other for away ones. From 2020, black was replaced with a shade between dark blue and black. Reebok manufactured kits for the team from 2008 to 2014 and Adidas supplied the kits in 2015. Zeven manufactures the kits for the team from 2016. For 2021, Puma is sponsor for the team kits.

Theme song: The theme song of the team for the 2008 season was “Jeetenge Hum Shaan Se”. The team anthem, “Game for More” was created for the 2009 season. The music was composed by Amit Trivedi and written by Anshu Sharma.

• A new anthem, “Here We Go The Royal Challengers” was created for the 2013 season and was used till 2015. The anthem “Play Bold” was composed by Salim–Sulaiman, sung by Siddharth Basrur and was released in 2016 during the launch of jerseys for the season. For 2017, the same anthem was recomposed and sung by Anand Bhaskar in 6 languages English, Kannada, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi.

Ambassadors: Katrina Kaif was roped in as the brand ambassador for the team in 2008, but later stepped down due to her prior commitments with filmmakers. Deepika Padukone, Ramya, Puneeth Rajkumar, Upendra and Ganesh have been the ambassadors for the team in the initial seasons. Shiva Rajkumar is the brand Ambassador for the season 11.

Top Performances: The Royal Challengers have never won the IPL but finished runners-up on three occasions between 2009, 2011 and 2016. Their lack of success over the years despite the presence of various notable players has earned them the tag of “underachievers”. The team holds the records of both the highest and the lowest totals in the IPL as 263/5 and 49 respectively.

Kit manufacturers and sponsors: Mallya’s home brand Royal Challenge became the primary sponsor of the team from the start of the Indian Premier League in 2008. Since then United Spirits Limited used almost all advertisement slots on the apparel for the promotion of their brands. Kingfisher, McDowell’s No1, Whyte and Mackay, White Mischief were prominently advertised on the jerseys in the initial seasons.

• In 2014, for the first time, Huawei, a non-home brand acquired the main slot on the jersey for two seasons. In 2016 and 2017, Hero Cycles and Gionee took over at the head jersey sponsors respectively. In 2018, Eros Now have officially announced to sponsor the jersey of the team.
• In 2015, the team had United Spirits, Huawei and Kingfisher as the principal sponsors. In 2016, RCB had its own brand Kingfisher by United Breweries Group along with Hero Cycles as the principle sponsors. Zeven, a multi sports apparel brand by Mahesh Bhupathi and Shikhar Dhawan replaced Adidas as the kit sponsors. 7 UP, Manipal Hospitals, Fever 104 FM and DNA Network were the official partners for 2016.
• As of 2017, while Zeven continued to manufacture kits for the team, Gionee became the principal sponsor. Other official partners included Gatorade, Wrogn, Boost, Tissot, Radio Mirchi, Acer, DNA Network, AbhiBus.com, Nissin and Galileo-iNurture.

• For 2021, season Puma bagged the sponsorship of RCB. They have solid squad to express themselves this year. Squad of mix of both senior players and young players and with proficient management.
• During the 2014 IPL, the Royal Challengers became the first team to provide free Wi-Fi connectivity to fans at their home ground. 50 access points were set up using fibre optic cables to provide the connectivity to fans on match days at the Chinnaswamy.
• The Royal Challengers have a huge and passionate fan base all over India and especially in the city of Bangalore. The fans, known to be loyal and vocal in their support, often turn up in large numbers for RCB’s home matches turning the stadium into what is called a “Sea of Red”.
• They are well known for their chants of “R-C-B, R-C-B” and chants of “ vi-rat, vi-rat”, “A-B-D, A-B-D” for their maestro batsmen Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers. The stadium organizers also provide the home team fans with cheer kits, RCB flags and noisemakers among other items. Royal Challengers Bangalore have formed a fan-following group named as Bold Army.

Standings of RCB from 2008 to 2020:

• In 2021 season, RCB whooping to do best in tournament and looking to quench of winning Championship for the first time. Let’s see how far RCB goes in 2021 season.