To manifest how Sweden’s largest sports sponsor takes social responsibility, we developed “Sports Swedish for Immigrants”, a long-term initiative and educational tool developed to teach Swedish to immigrants using the language of sports. The idea was to make learning more fun and playful by starting with sports terminology, introduce popular Swedish sports like bandy, floor ball and hand ball to immigrants, and welcome newly-arrivals and asylum-seekers to the Swedish sports community. To do this, we engaged and joined forces with schools, sports clubs, organizations, volunteers and media, who all got engaged in Svenska Spel’s cause.

We produced Svenska Spel’s “Sports Swedish for Immigrants”, a visual text book and educational tool teaching Swedish to immigrants, using the language of sports. The teaching material was produced in collaboration with five of Sweden’s national sports associations and two educational companies. The book contains words, sentences, common phrases, exercises and illustrations inspired by football, hockey, handball, bandy and floorball.

From a dedicated web site (http://www.sportsvenska.se), organizations and individuals could order the book for free. To grab the attention of media, we kicked everything off with a first IRL Swedish lesson with newly-arrivals. The response form the students was fantastic, making it a magical moment also for the teachers and the media that participated. The book was promoted in Social Media, with online video, through sports partners and through a carefully carried out PR plan.

Tapping into a real challenge that people could easily relate to, the initiative engaged people all over the country, and grabbed attention from national TV and radio, and almost all major newspapers in Sweden.

–> More than 50 major news outlets covered the initiative, with 100% positive sentiment, and an earned media reach exceeding 16M (in a country with 10M citizens). Results include national TV, several stories and interviews in national radio and spreads and stories in the biggest newspapers in Sweden.

–> With real action and response from the target group, the objective was to have the full edition of 1,000 copies of “Sports Swedish for Immigrants” ordered from the website. The first edition of 1,000 books was gone within days. A second and third edition have now been printed and today more than 15,000 books have been ordered and distributed to sports clubs, schools, refugee centers, libraries and volunteers – all using the material to welcome immigrants to Sweden and to the Swedish sports community.