Native Sportscasters

Soccer is Mexico’s most popular sport. Seventy-six percent love the game and regularly watch it, according to Nielsen Sports, and FIFA’s Big Count says 9m people are registered to play. It’s truly a national passion.

But nearly 1m of Mexico’s citizens can’t hear the action or find out how well or badly the national team is doing.

While most Mexicans speak Spanish, there are also 68 native languages, most commonly spoken in rural areas. In these areas, TV and internet signals are poor and people rely on radio but even these broadcasts are conducted entirely in Spanish.

We realised that there was no lack of footballing passion among Mexico’s indigenous citizens. What they lacked was access to the sport they loved.

The idea was to create a new type of sport broadcast, one in the major indigenous languages.

We trained up a new generation of native sportscasters and let them tell the story of Mexico’s final qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup. With the national team about to play the United States and El Salvador for the right to play in Qatar, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Our indigenous commentaries were broadcast via local radio stations in the area where most speakers lived. We amplified this unique message via radio using paid media, such as promos, mentions before, during and after the games.

And following success in qualifying, we also took our commentators to Qatar, where Mexico vs Poland was covered in Náhuatl, Mixe, Maya, Chatino, Mixteco and Zapoteco.

We made soccer more inclusive for Mexico’s non-Spanish speakers and 15 million people listened to the matches in their own language for the first time.

The campaign received 97% positive sentiment on social media, with sales shooting up by 21% during the qualifying games.

Most importantly, we successfully united indigenous Mexicans with their passion for football.