WINNING GOAL: Rallying fans behind Belgium’s premier football club

■Context
Thirty-four league titles, nine national cups, two UEFA cup winners' cups, one UEFA cup... RSC Anderlecht is Belgium's most successful football club. Since its foundation in 1908, the club has built a unique taste for victory and culture, mixing elegance, fair play, and spectacular offensive football often called “football champagne.” RSC Anderlecht has embodied Brussels's true open spirit for over a century and raised some famous international stars, such as Paul Van Himst, Frankie Vercauteren, Enzo Scifo, Vincent Kompany, and Romelu Lukaku. Yet, a football club can't live in its past, as glorious as it may be.

Challenge
Football today is much more than a sport that gathers supporters once a week in a stadium. It's become a global subculture that brings millions of people together daily. Football fans are passionate about their club, colors, and players. They want to engage, participate, and dialog. They ARE part of the game. That's why it was essential for the club to transform into a genuine contemporary media brand.

Solution
Koen Malfait, creative director, RSCA expert, and fan, was brought onto the project. It was essential to appreciate the legacy and ensure that every design decision would respect the DNA of the club. A Base crew of designers, art directors, strategists, digital experts, and copywriters was organized around him to interact with the RSCA brand team, led by Tim Borguet and Brecht Vaes.

Our goal: reposition RSCA as a “premium club for everyone” (on the national level, multilingual, diverse, inclusive) and create the tools to allow the club to lead with a cultural impact on the communication pitch. The RSC Anderlecht indeed connects every day with various fan typologies: live (competition), love (community), and like (culture).

The new RSCA brand toolbox and codes had to respond to the present and future needs of the club: starting naturally with the A-team but ranging as well from the Neerpede Academy – one of Europe's leading youth-talent football schools – to the women's team, E-sport, futsal, social initiatives, business and merchandising. The new RSCA ecosystem is dynamic, flexible, graphic, iconic, and easy to implement on all platforms.

The historic crest is complemented with a series of graphic items such as the RSCA wordmark; the crown; the three stars; a renewed purple, black, white, and gold color palette; and a bespoke new typeface, acting as the visual voice of the club. These various elements combine to identify the different teams, build the sub-brands, or allow the creation of future initiatives. With its unique classic approach and cursive dynamic alternate, the new RSCA typeface (including the numbers) is starkly different from the type usually used by football clubs.

This brand-new visual and textual toolbox was applied across the board (social networks, online TV, web applications, newsletters, stadium screens), enhancing the digital and social impact of the club. All of us at BaseBRU support the club, with the ultimate goal to help the teams, the staff, the fans, and everyone at RSCA to thrive on and off the pitch.