The Richmond Kickers are the professional men’s soccer club in the Richmond region. They have unveiled a new brand identity and logo for their season 2025.
Rob Ukrop, Team Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said that the club had been working on a rebranding for eight months. He explained that the effort was partly motivated by a desire for a separation between their brand and local youth soccer league Richmond Kickers Youth.
The youth club owned the pro team until 2018, when a group led by Ukrop purchased it. Both sides operate separately, but share the same logo. The deal involved the pro-team leasing intellectual property to youth club.
Ukrop explained that the lease had ended, and Kickers pro was forced to rebrand.
He said, “There is a bit of confusion on the market.” “We felt we needed to refresh .” The new Kickers logo is a roundel in red with a white monogram of R and K interlocked.
Ukrop explained the new logo by saying, “The R is bigger than the other two letters. It anchors the whole thing. You can’t have Kickers without Richmond.”
The swooping legs of the R and K logo are meant to represent James River Falls. The logo includes a 93, which represents the founding year of the club in 1993.
The Kickers’ new logo is a combination of red, white, and navy blue. This color scheme was used by the team in 1995 when it won the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
From 1993 until 2011, the Kickers had a crest with their original colors. In 2012, the logo was changed to what Richmonders know today.
Ukrop stated that the Kickers wanted to incorporate some of their past into the new logo and rebranding.
He said, “We felt it was time to get back to our roots with history.” “We wanted something traditional that showed our history and development.”
The Kickers released a variety of secondary logos on Wednesday. Most of them were different colored versions the club’s monogram or word mark. The Kickers have also released a new silhouetted version their kangaroo-mascot Kickeroo.
Alyn Car, Richmond Kickers director of branding, marketing and advertising, worked with Alex Kocher, the creative director at Richmond-based consultancy Easy Friday Co. on the rebrand.
Kocher worked previously on the branding of the Richmond Ivy women’s pre-professional team, which was formed from the Richmond United Soccer League women’s team last March.
22 Holdings LLC, owned by Ukrop, purchased a majority share of the Kickers professional team from Kickers Youth six years ago. Kickers Youth had previously owned this team since 2009. Ukrop served as the president of Kickers Youth’s board of directors prior to becoming the team’s CEO and chairman.
Kickers youth recently combined and fellow youth club Richmond Strikers in order to form a brand new club called Richmond United.
Ukrop stated that the Kickers were aware of the fact that the two youth teams were working together on a new launch. However, the decision to change the Kickers’ logo had nothing whatsoever to do with this merger.
He said, “I was not part of the recent Richmond Kickers Youth Club and Richmond Strikers discussion but they knew that we were working on an exciting new brand launch.” “We may be separate, but we work together to support each other .”
The Richmond Kickers, along with Charleston Battery, are the longest continuously operating professional soccer club in the United States.
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