Club Sporting Cristal is a Peruvian sports club located in the city of Lima, best known for its football team. It was founded on 13 December 1955 in the Rímac district by engineer Richard Bentín Mujica and his wife Esther Grande de Bentín, stockholders of the Peruvian brewery Backus and Johnston. The club and the brewery have been closely linked since its inception, and it is for this reason that it is popularly known as los Cerveceros ("the brewers").

The team has played in the Peruvian Primera División since 1956, where it obtained the title that year. Due to this achievement, the Cristal is often referred to as "El club que nació campeón". Since their first participation, they have won the league title 19 times and are one of the few teams in Peru to have never been relegated from the top division. Sporting Cristal is also the first Peruvian team to have been crowned tricampeóns, successively winning the 1994, 1995, and 1996 seasons. In 1997, they were runners-up of the Copa Libertadores, losing the final to Brazilian side Cruzeiro. The Cristal holds the longest undefeated streak in the tournament; 17 games without suffering a loss.

The Cristal has a heated rivalry with Universitario de Deportes. One of the main reasons for the enmity between the two sides is the series of transfers of Universitario's star players to los Celestes. The club also has rivalries with Club Alianza Lima, Deportivo Municipal, and the Sport Boys.^{[citation needed]}

Sporting Cristal plays its home games at the Estadio Alberto Gallardo. They play at the Estadio Nacional for international competitions such as the Libertadores or Sudamericana. The Estadio Nacional is also the venue for matches against Universitario and Alianza Lima.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to football, the club has teams specializing in Esports, futsal, women's football, and volleyball.

Ricardo Bentín Mujica, with the support of his wife, co-owners of Backus and Johnston brewery, was the man who is credited with achieving the company's goal. A club from Rímac ward, known as Sporting Tabaco founded in 1926 and originally belonging to the tobacco growers' union, was already playing in the professional Peruvian First Division. Never having won a national championship, the club was in dire economic straits. Bentín decided to buy the club and search for a playing ground, so that the club could develop and be able to play better at the professional level. The club found a lot in the neighborhood of La Florida of 137,000 m².^{[citation needed]}

On 13 December 1955 the club was founded as Sporting Cristal, after Backus' best-known beer brand, Cristal. The new club from the Rímac ward debuted in 1956 in the professional Primera Division and won their first national title that same year. Journalists thus called them the club born a champion (nació campeon). The team managed to win more titles over the years and was known as one of the best football clubs in Peru after Universitario and Alianza Lima.^{[citation needed]}

Even before its foundation, the Sporting Cristal Backus project had more than one opponent: articles from the time point out how certain sports journalists and football clubs viewed with displeasure that a team was financed by a private company. Even the Peruvian Football Federation itself put legal obstacles in the way of the team before and after its merger; until March 1956 the FPF did not authorize the team's participation in that year's championship, arguing from the prohibition of advertising in the clubs to the fact that they should have names of national heroes, places or institutions of the country. Various legal outlets were used for the impositions of the Federation, however, the controversy did not end until 1968,when the word "Backus" was finally removed from the club's name.^{[citation needed]}