Sydney Sweeney Novig Sports Ad Controversy Explained

Sydney Sweeney became the center of another advertising controversy in September 2026 after appearing nude and nearly nude in a campaign for sports prediction market Novig.

The “Just Sports” campaign was intended to emphasize that Novig focuses exclusively on sporting events, but several prominent female athletes accused the advertising of sexualizing women’s sports and undermining efforts to have female competitors recognized for their athletic ability rather than their bodies. The backlash subsequently produced a social-media campaign in which athletes posted footage of their performances under the message “this is what a woman in sport looks like.”

Sweeney has a deeper connection to Novig than a traditional celebrity spokesperson: she joined the company as a strategic partner and equity holder and says she participated in developing the campaign.

What Is The Sydney Sweeney Novig “Just Sports” Ad?

Novig launched its first national advertising campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney on September 9, 2026. The company called the campaign “Just Sports” and said it was intended to highlight Novig’s decision to focus its prediction market exclusively on sporting events. [Novig]

The commercial shows Sweeney nude or nearly nude while footballs, basketball equipment, hockey gear and other sports-related objects strategically cover parts of her body. She appears in a series of scenes involving sports including football, basketball, tennis, hockey, soccer and baseball. [Entertainment Weekly] [Us Weekly]

At the end of the commercial, Sweeney emphasizes that Novig does not offer prediction markets involving wars, deaths or politics and instead concentrates on sports. [Front Office Sports] [Novig]

Why Is The Sydney Sweeney Novig Ad Controversial?

The central criticism is that a campaign ostensibly about sports uses a sexualized celebrity rather than female athletic achievement as its primary attraction. The Guardian reported that Olympic athletes and other professional competitors condemned the campaign for what they viewed as the sexualization of women’s sports. [The Guardian]

Critics did not simply object to nudity. Several athletes argued that female competitors have spent years trying to ensure their sporting accomplishments, strength and skills receive attention rather than having women’s bodies used primarily as marketing devices. [The Guardian]

The controversy consequently became a wider discussion about whether sexualized advertising associated with sports reinforces the very stereotypes women’s athletics has attempted to move beyond.

Ariarne Titmus Condemned The Sydney Sweeney Ad

Four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus was among the most prominent critics of the campaign. Titmus wrote on Instagram that she was infuriated by the advertisement and had believed this type of sports marketing belonged in the past. [The Guardian]

Titmus said the campaign was disrespectful both to women who had dedicated their lives to becoming elite athletes and to women who love sports because of qualities such as teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence and unity. [The Guardian]

She also questioned why monetizing women’s bodies and sexualizing women in sports remained a prominent advertising strategy. [The Guardian]

Amy Hunt Called Out Sydney Sweeney After A 200-Meter Race

British sprinter Amy Hunt directly addressed Sweeney following her 200-meter race at the Ultimate Championships. Hunt finished fourth in a race won by Melissa Jefferson-Wooden in 21.47 seconds and then told the BBC, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like.” [The Guardian]

Hunt emphasized the muscles, training, hard work, sweat and sacrifice involved in elite athletics.

She argued that being a woman in sports is not always glamorous or conventionally sexy, contrasting the realities of elite competition with the presentation of Sweeney in the Novig advertisement. [The Guardian]

“This Is What A Woman In Sport Looks Like” Became A Response To The Ad

Female athletes began responding to the campaign with videos of actual training and competition. American gymnast Gracie Kramer helped popularize the response by using the message “this is what a woman in sport looks like.” [The Guardian]

Australian Olympic swimmer Lani Pallister posted footage of her training, racing and winning medals. Sprinter Bree Rizzo published a highlights reel from her track career. [The Guardian]

The Australian Institute of Sport also joined the response with footage featuring women participating in archery, gymnastics, boxing and softball as well as women working in sports science. [The Guardian]

The response effectively transformed criticism of one advertisement into a broader attempt by athletes to contrast sexualized sports marketing with the physical work and athletic achievement required to compete professionally.

Tilly Kearns And Skye Nicolson Criticized The Novig Campaign

Australian Olympic water polo player Tilly Kearns publicly said she hated Sweeney’s new sports advertisement. Kearns was among a growing collection of female athletes who criticized the campaign after it circulated online. [The Guardian]

World champion boxer Skye Nicolson argued that the backlash was not about criticizing women for looking attractive or embracing femininity. Instead, she distinguished between an athlete looking sexy while competing and advertisers using sex itself as the tool for selling sports. [The Guardian]

Nicolson said women should be able to embrace femininity while also being serious athletes, but objected to what she viewed as making a mockery of women’s sports for advertising purposes. [The Guardian]

Sydney Sweeney Is An Investor In Novig

Sweeney is not simply a celebrity hired to appear in the advertisement. Novig announced that she had joined the company as both a strategic partner and an equity holder. [Novig]

Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that Sweeney approached the company because she was interested in an equity partnership. He declined to reveal how large her ownership position was or how much she was paid for the campaign. [Front Office Sports]

Fortinsky also said Sweeney helped shape the campaign’s message, including its emphasis on Novig offering sports markets rather than markets involving politics, wars or deaths. [Front Office Sports]

Her ownership stake became relevant to the backlash because criticism could not easily be separated into criticism of Novig on one side and its hired spokesperson on the other.

Sydney Sweeney Said She Helped Create The Campaign

Sweeney has described the partnership as a collaboration in which she participated in creative decisions. She told Complex that she does not like simply attaching her face to a company and wanted to be involved more deeply in the Novig campaign. [Complex]

Sweeney said she had been involved in creative conversations from the beginning and described the advertisement as a simple, playful way of communicating Novig’s “just sports” concept. [Complex]

Novig similarly described Sweeney as an equity holder and strategic partner and said the campaign was developed to convey its focus on sports with humor and a “playful edge.” [Novig]

Novig’s CEO Said The Sydney Sweeney Ad Put The Company In The National Conversation

Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky openly acknowledged the enormous publicity value of the campaign. He told Front Office Sports that Sweeney is particularly effective at commanding attention and said the campaign had effectively forced Novig into the national conversation. [Front Office Sports]

Front Office Sports reported that the commercial accumulated millions of views across social platforms within hours of its release. [Front Office Sports]

Fortinsky also defended the adult nature of the commercial by pointing out that customers must be at least 21 years old to use Novig. [Front Office Sports]

That means the controversy itself helped accomplish one of the campaign’s primary marketing objectives: introducing Novig to people who may not previously have known the company.

Sydney Sweeney Appeared To Respond With Nude Photos Of Athletes

Sweeney did not initially issue a direct statement answering the female athletes criticizing her, but her September 13 Instagram activity was widely interpreted as an indirect response. She shared images of professional athletes who had posed nude or partially nude for ESPN’s famous Body Issue. [Us Weekly]

The athletes featured in Sweeney’s posts included Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki, Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski and Karl-Anthony Towns. She also shared an image featuring Jason Kelce and members of the Philadelphia Eagles offensive line. [Us Weekly]

Sweeney did not explain why she posted the images. Us Weekly reported that it contacted her representative for comment and accurately characterized the posts as only an apparent response rather than a confirmed rebuttal. [Us Weekly]

Why The ESPN Body Issue Comparison Became Part Of The Debate

Sweeney’s posts implicitly introduced another question: whether nudity involving actual professional athletes is materially different from nudity used in a commercial selling a sports-related product. Critics of the Novig campaign argued that the issue was not the mere presence of a nude woman but how the imagery related to women’s sports. [The Guardian] [Us Weekly]

Athletes opposing the Novig campaign emphasized performance, training and athletic accomplishment. Sweeney’s sharing of Body Issue photographs highlighted athletes who had themselves chosen to pose nude, adding questions about agency and context to the controversy. [Us Weekly]

Sweeney herself had not publicly explained the comparison through September 14, so claims about exactly what message she intended to send with the Body Issue posts remain interpretation rather than confirmed fact.

What Did Sydney Sweeney Say About The Novig Advertisement?

Sweeney described the campaign as deliberately playful. In Novig’s announcement, she said the idea was to eliminate distractions and place the focus completely on sports while using confidence and humor to attract attention. [Novig]

She separately told Complex that she grew up participating in sports including soccer, softball, skiing and mixed martial arts and that sports remained an important interest for her. [Complex]

Sweeney also said she enjoys hockey and boxing and developed an increased appreciation for fighting while portraying boxer Christy Martin. [Complex]

Her own sports background did not prevent professional athletes from arguing that the Novig advertisement presented women and sports in a way they considered harmful.

What Is Novig?

Novig describes itself as a sports-focused prediction market. The company says users can trade positions based on sporting outcomes and promotes its exclusive concentration on sports as a distinction from prediction markets that offer contracts involving politics and other events. [Novig]

Novig launched nationwide under a federally regulated framework in August 2026 and maintains a minimum user age of 21. [Novig]

The company competes for attention in a growing prediction-market industry that includes companies such as Kalshi and Polymarket. Fortinsky told Front Office Sports before the Sweeney campaign that increasing Novig’s brand recognition was one of the company’s challenges. [Front Office Sports]

Novig Also Made A Responsible Trading Ad With Sweeney

The provocative advertisement was only one part of Novig’s larger Sweeney campaign. Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that additional advertisements featuring Sweeney were planned, including a responsible-trading commercial. [Front Office Sports]

A follow-up advertisement urged users to take breaks and set limits when trading on sports. [ComingSoon.net]

The responsible-trading message did not become the main focus of the campaign’s media coverage, which was dominated by Sweeney’s nude imagery and the subsequent athlete backlash.

The Campaign Went Viral

The commercial quickly achieved the attention Novig wanted. Front Office Sports reported that it generated millions of views across social platforms within hours. [Front Office Sports]

Entertainment Weekly reported that the advertisement performed particularly strongly on X, where it collected millions of views shortly after being released. [Entertainment Weekly]

The controversy expanded further when athletes began producing their own responses and news coverage shifted from Sweeney’s nudity itself to questions about the portrayal of women in sports. [The Guardian]

Chloe Fineman Parodied The Sydney Sweeney Ad

Comedian and former Saturday Night Live cast member Chloe Fineman also mocked the Novig commercial. Fineman posted a parody in which she wore a blonde wig and imitated the advertisement’s heavy emphasis on Sweeney’s body while repeatedly invoking sports. [The Daily Beast]

The parody added another layer to the campaign’s viral spread and reflected criticism that the advertisement’s supposedly sports-centered message was overwhelmed by its sexual imagery. [The Daily Beast]

The Novig Ad Followed Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle Controversy

The Novig campaign arrived approximately a year after Sweeney became the center of a different advertising controversy involving American Eagle. The 2025 “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” campaign used wordplay involving “jeans” and “genes” and drew criticism from people who believed some of the advertising evoked ideas involving genetic superiority and eugenics. [The Guardian]

Sweeney later said she had been surprised by the reaction and acknowledged that her decision not to address the controversy at the time had helped widen divisions surrounding it. [The Guardian]

The Novig dispute involves a different issue. The central criticism this time concerns sexualized advertising, the representation of female athletes and Sweeney’s financial and creative involvement with a sports prediction company.

Why The Sydney Sweeney Novig Controversy Matters

The controversy has become part of a much larger argument about women, sexuality and sports marketing. Critics including Titmus, Hunt, Kearns and Nicolson argue that female athletes should be showcased primarily for their performance, strength and accomplishments rather than having sexualized imagery used as shorthand for women’s involvement in sports. [The Guardian]

At the same time, Sweeney’s decision to share nude photographs of accomplished athletes introduced a competing question about whether women displaying their bodies is inherently inconsistent with female empowerment or athletic credibility. Sweeney did not explicitly state that argument herself, making the meaning of those posts open to interpretation. [Us Weekly]

For Novig, however, one concrete result is clear: the advertisement dramatically increased awareness of the company. Its CEO openly acknowledged that Sweeney’s ability to attract attention had pushed Novig into the national conversation. [Front Office Sports]

For the athletes criticizing the campaign, that success is also central to their objection. The most widely discussed part of an advertisement supposedly about sports became Sweeney’s body rather than anything an athlete accomplished in competition. [The Guardian]