With the first brand extension introduced in mid-2002, the 30 male entrants from 2003 to 2006 consisted of 15 wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown brands, respectively. At first, the winner of the match received a shot for their brand's top championship, either the World Heavyweight Championship or WWE Championship. Starting in 2004, the Royal Rumble winner had the option of challenging for either brand's top championship. For instance, Chris Benoit switched from SmackDown to Raw after winning the 2004 event to challenge for Raw's top championship at the time. From 2007 to 2010, participants from the ECW brand competed along with the Raw and SmackDown brands, with the ECW Championship added as an option, although no winner ever chose it. During ECW's participation, the entries for each brand were not evenly divided. The ECW Championship was deactivated in 2010, leaving the World Heavyweight Championship and WWE Championship as the only choices until those two titles were unified in December 2013 as the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, which became the only option until July 2016, when the brand extension returned, which introduced the Universal Championship—the WWE World Heavyweight Championship reverted to being called the WWE Championship. Like the first brand extension, the winner of the 2017 event earned a match for their brand's top championship, the Universal Championship or WWE Championship, but beginning with the 2018 event, the winner has a choice (which is also true of the women, who had their inaugural Royal Rumble match that same year). As a result of NXT becoming one of WWE's three main brands in September 2019, NXT's championships became eligible choices, beginning with the 2020 event. Since the return of the brand extension, the number of participants from each brand has not been evenly divided, as each match has featured wrestlers from NXT as well as surprise appearances from former, returning, or debuting wrestlers.