Sydney Sweeney’s latest advertising gamble is once again a bust. Right?
Seemingly in an effort to double down on controversial publicity, Sweeney recently appeared in an advertising campaign for Novig, a sports prediction market platform. The campaign follows her “Great Jeans” campaign for American Eagle from last fall – which sparked concerns about promoting eugenics – and features Sweeney almost entirely naked posing with various pieces of sporting equipment.
The conceit of the advertisement is simple: Novig, unlike other prediction market platforms, wants to promote that it is only for sports betting, hence her “wearing just sports.” The actress repeats “sports” 16 times in the 59 second version of the ad, but never actually names a single sport.
It is vital to recognize, however, that Sweeney’s nudity is not the core of what is wrong with this advertisement. Rather, the campaign is problematic because of how it uses her nudity to diminish women, their bodies, female athletes and the sports themselves.
Sweeney posted the longest version of the advertisement to her Instagram, where it has gained over 60 million views, a mark staggeringly above her other reels, which usually receive around 20-35 million views.
Many female athletes spoke out against the ad, including four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer and sprinter Amy Hunt. Kramer wrote in an Instagram story that the ad is infuriating as someone who has spent her whole life competing in a sport where she said female athletes are oversexualized.
[Related: Second take: Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad is out of fashion]
In an apparent response to the public outcry, Sweeney posted cover images of ESPN Magazine’s “The Body Issue,” an annual issue of the magazine that uses partially nude photos of athletes to highlight their bodies. Sweeney’s Instagram story pictures did not include any captions – only images from Serena Williams, Myles Garrett and Ronda Rousey’s issues, among others.
As many have pointed out, comparing the celebration of athletes’ bodies to the ad’s use of nudity to promote Novig feels like a false equivalency.
But, the concern lies less in her nudity than the use of sporting equipment to emphasize her sexuality. One clip of the ad shows Sweeney only covered by shoulder pads and a football. By turning football equipment to props for sexual display, the ad trivializes the sport by shifting the focus away from the athleticism the equipment represents.
To brazenly chastise Sweeney’s nudity would be as problematic to women as the ad itself is to female athletes. On top of the visuals, Sweeney’s narration drives the attack home by painting herself as a clueless woman posing naked with sports equipment. In the only true break from her repeated use of “sports,” Sweeney makes two other comments.
In the first, she lies on a pool table wearing only Novig underwear.
“You can’t trade this.” Sweeney said. “I just look good here.”
Immediately after, the actress lies on her stomach on a locker room bench, balancing a soccer ball on her cleats while saying, “No betting on wars or deaths and no politics.” The very form of the sentence – beginning with “no” and using “or” and “and” to connect the three ideas instead of utilizing proper list structure – makes the sentiment read as juvenile.
Given all the backlash, Sweeney’s response and everything problematic within the ad, with respect to the female demographic, the campaign surely must be a failure for her and Novig.
Not exactly.
Novig rose to number 11 on the App Store after sitting at number 50 in August. The term “Novig” had twice the search interest as “Kalshi” and “Polymarket” – two of the most popular prediction market platforms – in the week after the advertisement was released. The only diminishing return seems to be on social media, with Sweeney losing over 200,000 followers on Instagram – arguably an irrelevant sacrifice given the fanbase she lost likely had little overlap with the ad’s target audience. With all of Novig’s success, particularly in conversation with last year’s advertising campaign, it is hard to see this Internet-age controversy as anything but effective and deliberate.
If this is the case, Novig would be far from the first to operate with the mindset of “all publicity is good publicity” – particularly when the Internet broadcasts these types of advertisements, unable to tell the difference between positive and negative engagement – nor would this controversy be the first for Sweeney.
[Related: Second Take: The 2010s aren’t coming back. Let’s put down the Unicorn Frappuccino.]
One of the most subtle parts of Sweeney’s speech comes at the very beginning of the ad: “Novig is just sports. So they wanted to show just sports.”Sweeney separates herself from the platform when, in fact, she is a strategic partner and equity holder of Novig.
“The campaign was about embracing a fun idea,” Sweeney said in a press release from Novig. “The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports.”
Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky said Sweeney was “driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging” for the advertising campaign.
As if the attack on women in sports that everyone – the actress included – is focusing on was not enough, the “Novig is Just Sports” advertising campaign uses her body and narration to insult and demean women while lampshading that the whole thing is a joke. All of this while trying to pretend the issue is nudity – which it never was – and that Sweeney just wanted to be a part of some fun campaign, which is actually for a company she has financial stake in.
Like last year with her American Eagle advertisement, it is hard to say what cards the actress actually holds. And while this latest advertising gamble may have lost some of her fans’ respect, with the success Novig is seeing, it is hard to say Sweeney is anywhere close to striking out.
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