Female athletes are calling out Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad, saying the campaign sexualizes women in sports and undoes years of work to get them taken seriously.
The ad, which debuted September 9, is the first national campaign for Novig, a sports prediction market. That’s an app where people buy and sell positions on how games will turn out. Novig launched nationwide last month, and Sweeney isn’t just the face of the brand. She’s also an equity holder, meaning she owns a piece of the company.
In the spot, Sweeney is naked or close to it for almost the entire time, with footballs, a tennis racket, a baseball bat, and other gear covering what needs covering. In one shot, she lies nude on top of a basketball. As the camera pans across her body, she explains that Novig is “just sports,” with no betting on wars, deaths, or politics. The version Novig posted to Instagram racked up 37 million views in four days.
The athletes are not impressed. Four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus went to Instagram with her frustration. “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” she wrote. According to Forbes, she also called the ad “a kick in the face” to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft.
Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer told CNN the campaign is “very damaging” for female athletes and for young girls who want to get into sports. “Just absolute utter disbelief, incredibly disappointing, like, how far you can put women’s sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial,” she said.
@flickpalmateerContext is everything.♬ original sound – Flick Palmateer
Olympic 100-meter semifinalist Bree Masters answered the Sydney Sweeney Novig ad with receipts. She posted photos of herself on the track with a simple caption. “Respectfully Sydney Sweeney… This is what women in sports really look like,” she wrote.
Gymnast Gracie Kramer did the same, sharing videos of herself competing along with a message aimed at the campaign. British sprinter Amy Hunt warned that ads like this could push young women away from sports by teaching them that looks matter more than ability.
View this post on Instagram
The frustration goes back decades. Female athletes have long fought to be valued for what their bodies can do instead of how they look, and many see a nearly nude actress selling a sports app as a step backward.
Sweeney and Novig say the ad is supposed to be fun. In the press release announcing the campaign, Sweeney said the idea was “simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports,” with “confidence, humor and a playful edge.” She told Complex it was “a very simple and playful idea” and said she likes partnerships where she gets to collaborate instead of just lending her face.
As the backlash grew over the weekend, Sweeney appeared to respond without saying a word about it directly. On Sunday, she posted a nude image from the Novig ad on her Instagram stories next to covers from ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue. That annual special edition featured athletes posing nude or nearly nude to celebrate all kinds of bodies. Her lineup included Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki, Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jason Kelce.
The message seemed clear: athletes have posed without clothes before. Critics point to one big difference. Those Body Issue shoots featured athletes celebrating their own trained bodies, while the Novig ad uses an actress’s body to sell a trading app.
The controversy could also put Novig’s partnerships in the spotlight. The New York Mets, an organization that has promoted girls and women in sports, currently partner with the company. The team did not respond when Forbes asked whether the Sweeney campaign would affect that relationship.This isn’t Sweeney’s first time at the center of an ad controversy. Her 2025 American Eagle campaign, built around a play on the words “jeans” and “genes,” set off a firestorm online and turned into a political debate.
When GQ later asked her about it, she said she was surprised by the reaction but did not apologize.So far, she’s handling this one the same way.
