Richmond Rugby

Hello and welcome to the official SNAP Sponsorship profile of Richmond Rugby.

We're delighted to announce that we’ve now partnered with SNAP Sponsorship and we’re looking for sponsors who are excited about affiliating themselves with the second oldest rugby club in England. We’re a community club with a long and illustrious history, big ambitions and a lot of talent.

We strive to craft a partnership with our sponsors that meets their specific objectives, whether that be community gifting, social responsibility (CSR), direct sales or brand building.

We’ll work with you to develop a partnership which meets both your objectives and adds value to our members — supporting our club’s ongoing work in the community to remove barriers and make sport enjoyable, accessible and sustainable for all.

Whatever your motivation, find out more below. Thank you for visiting our profile.

Why Sponsor Us?

Increased brand awareness and raising the profile of your business in our community

Do you want to raise the profile of your business or organisation? Richmond Rugby focuses on three key benefit areas within our commercial partnership programme:

• Branding
• Hospitality
• Communication

We have a variety of partnership packages available with a range of exclusive benefits:

• Visible branding on club shirts and at the venue
• Company logo on club website and dedicated advert in every match-day programme
• Company promotion on club social media accounts, weekly and on match-day
• Communication to a thriving and loyal membership via email campaigns and weekly newsletter
• Exclusive hospitality, pre-match lunches and designated grandstand seating on half-way line
• Season ticket to all Richmond games
• Opportunity to purchase Twickenham tickets
•  

Networking and engaging with over 2k members and our many supporters

Richmond Rugby has a diverse family of club partners ranging from local companies to international organisations, many of whom have been long-term supporters of the club. The club has over 2,000 members, including 700+ playing members across its men’s, women's, youth and minis sections, with a strong AB 1 demographic. 

As a club we understand the importance and power of the internet and social media, and therefore use our website and Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube to promote our club, fixtures and sponsors with a total digital following of nearly 26,000 people. 

We’re an extremely social club who prides itself on being warm, friendly and family-orientated. We regularly host events throughout the year and we’d be happy to host a sponsored networking event if desired.

Richmond Rugby has an array of sponsorship opportunities which can be tailored to meet your objectives. Through sponsorship, our club will promote your company in a wide variety of ways enriching the profile of your business in our community. 

Get involved in grassroots sport and remove economic barriers making sport affordable, accessible and inclusive for all

Sponsorship of a grassroots sport delivers a much higher return on investment than traditional advertising. This is because sponsorship allows your business to become directly involved in activities that are highly valued by local consumers.

Richmond Rugby is proud of its strong bonds with the community and enjoys supporting and engaging with local initiatives. Consumers are known to form strong positive associations with sponsors who also support the development of grassroots sport and contribute to the local area and by directly supporting us, you’re helping to remove economic barriers — making sport affordable, accessible and inclusive for all in the community.

Contact us now to find out more and explore what Richmond Rugby can offer you!

The Club Today

Founded in 1861, Richmond Football Club as it was then known, is the second oldest rugby club in England. The club has provided rugby playing opportunities for men, women, boys and girls in our long and illustrious history and we pride ourselves on being a community rugby club first and foremost.

Our vision is "To provide an inspiring environment where a culture of ambition promotes rugby excellence, enjoyment and friendship."

We believe sponsorship of our rugby club will deliver companies great value from both a return on investment or from a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) perspective.

The Men's First XV play in the Championship (level two), but the club prides itself on putting four men's squads on the pitch each week, two women's teams, a veteran’s team (the Heavies) together with a thriving youth and minis section from U6s up to U18s, all of which highlights our One Club ethos.

Our vision

• Richmond aims to be the most inspiring and inclusive community rugby club promoting rugby excellence, enjoyment and friendship.
• To ensure the club is fully self-funding and remains one of the top 30 clubs in England. Richmond Men's 1st XV compete in National League 1 (third tier) and Richmond Women 1st XV play in the Women's Championship South.
• We are ambitious and strive to be the best community rugby club in the UK, offering first-class, well-coached and medically well-supervised rugby opportunities for all. This includes four Senior Men’s XVs, one Students/U21 XV, one Colts XV, one Veteran’s XV (the ‘Heavies’), two Women’s XVs and Youth and Mini rugby for nearly 500 boys and girls. All this within a friendly environment, offering great networking opportunities, both social and commercial.

Our intention is to be the best possible community rugby club and we now run a very successful Community Department which coaches in more than 20 local primary and secondary schools in the borough, as well as being the first club to run a regular training facility at Feltham Young Offenders Institution. 

In the relatively short space of time the department has operated, our school engagement has grown year on year, we now support and deliver rugby coaching in a large number of local primary and preparatory schools, senior schools and sixth forms and colleges. Last academic year saw the department coach for more than 1,500 hours in schools to over 1,000 children.

All of our partner schools take part in community events at various senior men's and women's fixtures throughout the course of the season. This enables students, parents, siblings and teachers, the opportunity to experience and gain exclusive access to Richmond Rugby fixtures. During the 2021/22 season, more than 200 local boys and girls attended specialist coaching sessions prior to our senior matches.

We also delivered a variety of community projects, including our weekly rugby programme in Her Majesties Youth Offenders Institute Feltham, delivering coaching and mentoring.

During the school holidays, our community team deliver skills camps for mini and youth players, helping them to improve and develop their game, and receive expert coaching from a wide-range of club coaches, first-team players and external professionals. Our camps are open to everyone, not just Richmond members.

On Sundays throughout the season, our team of community coaches also assist and deliver training for our various mini and youth teams (U5-U18s).
 

History of Our Club

• Formed in 1861, the second oldest club in England.
• World’s first inter-club fixture against Blackheath in 1864.
• One of the eight founder clubs of the RFU in 1871.
• Hosted first experimental floodlit game in 1878.
• Played at the Richmond Athletic Ground since 1889.
• Played the first All Black touring side in 1905.
• Played in the first game at Twickenham in 1909.
• Celebrated 100th Anniversary with a match at Twickenham against RFU presidents XV in 1961.
• The first Women’s International match was played at Richmond 1986
• and Richmond became the first women's rugby club in the world to run two teams.
• Promoted to Premiership for the 1997/98 season.
• Celebrated our 150th Anniversary with a match against the Barbarians in 2011.
• Richmond Women won the Women's Premiership in 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2013/14 and 2015/16.
• Crowned National League 1 Champions in 2015/16 & 2019/20

Our heritage

• 126 men and over 100 women have been capped for their country whilst playing at Richmond.
• A touring club, Richmond teams have toured to South Africa, Australia, East Africa, USA, South East Asia, Fiji, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, France, Canada, Italy and Croatia.
• Affiliated clubs include Collegians in Durban, Hamiltons and Villager in Cape Town, Warringah Rats in Sydney plus 7 others in Argentina, Jersey, Canada, Kenya, France, USA and HMS Richmond.
• Resulting from this touring culture, a natural club for long-term visitors to the UK from countries such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.

Our culture

• One of the largest clubs in the UK with over 2700 members.
• A broadly based community club providing competitive and well coached rugby to both sexes and all ages.
• Great networking opportunities, both social and commercial.

The fight back

• The club went into Administration in 1999 as a result of the financial strains of the professional era playing in the Premiership and the reduction of the league from 14 clubs to 12 clubs.
• A financial rescue was successful in bringing the club out of Administration and onto a sound financial footing, so preserving its traditional home venue with seven full sized pitches, which it shares with long time co-tenant London Scottish.
• For the 1999/2000 season, at the request of the RFU, Richmond took a sabbatical from the leagues and played a variety of ‘friendlies’.
• Reintroduced at level 9 in 2000/01 from which the Men's First XV gained promotion four years running by winning their league and winning 83 league games in succession, a national record.
• Promoted to London 1 (level 5) in 2004/05 just below the national leagues finishing 3rd/2nd/4th and league winners in 2007/08 being promoted to National 2 South, finishing 4th in 2009 and 3rd in 2010/11, being promoted to National 1 in 2012, finishing 7th out of 16 in 2013/14 & 2014/15, winning the league in 2016/17 and were promoted to the Championship. In 2019 Richmond were relegated to National 1, but promoted straight back to Championship in 2020.
• BBC London Team of the Year 2004 (All non-professional Sports).
• Winners of six Surrey Cups between 2001 to 2007.
• Richmond Women won the premiership in 2010/11/12/14/16, playing in the first televised club play off final, and also the first Premier 15s Sky Sports televised game, playing in the Premiership from 2017 to 2020.
• Richmond Rugby CLG formed and acquires 100% of the shares in the rescue company RVL in March 2015 to secure the future ownership of the Richmond group of companies.
• Richmond Rugby awarded RFU Club of the Year for 2016.

Aspirations

With membership and crowd attendances rising, we have ambitious plans to continue to develop the infrastructure at the club.

Naturally, we want to support our sponsors and build them in to our club on a strategic level — allowing all of our partners to benefit from our ever-improving facilities, expanding audience and our community involvement.