A social media post claims that Sweden has recognised sex as a sport and is organising the first-ever sex tournament. Various Indian media outlets like Times of India, India Today, News 18, and Hindustan Times have also published news reports about the same. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Sweden recognised sex as a sport and is organising a tournament.
Fact: Sweden has not recognised sex as a sport. An organisation named Swedish Sex Association applied to be part of the Swedish Sports Confederation, but their application was rejected. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
Firstly, to check the claim’s veracity, we looked for news reports from Swedish and international media outlets by performing a keyword search on the internet. This search did not yield any credible news reports validating the viral claim.
In fact, we found news reports revealing this information as a hoax. A Swedish media outlet, Göteborgs-Posten, published a news report on 26 April 2023, stating that Sweden’s National Sports Confederation rejected an application filed by the Swedish Sex Association to be a part of it.
When the Swedish Sex Association’s head, Dragan Batic, submitted this application in January, Björn Eriksson, the Chairman of the National Sports Confederation, said that “sex is not part of their business.” He was quoted by TV4 news saying, “I just hope this nonsense goes away. It will be a unanimous no from us.” The TT News Agency, a Sweden-based news agency, also reported the news of the Swedish Sex Association’s application getting rejected by the country’s Sports Confederation. The reason for the rejection was cited as incomplete application.
Additionally, Anna Setzman, a spokesperson for the Swedish Sports Confederation, denied these claims. She said, “Right now, false information is being spread in some international media about Sweden and Swedish sports.” With all this evidence, it is clear that Sweden has not recognised sex as a sport.
Meanwhile, the Swedish Sex Association states on its website that the European Championship in Sex will be organised on 08 June 2023. However, since they are not part of the National Sports Federation of Sweden, it is safe to assume they are unrelated to this championship.
To sum up, Sweden has not recognised sex as a sport.
