Sydney Sweeney's nearly nude Novig ad has drawn sharp backlash from Olympic athletes like Ariarne Titmus, who call it damaging to women's sport. Sweeney has defended it as playful, not political.
Sydney Sweeney is once again at the centre of an advertising storm, roughly a year after her American Eagle denim campaign drew accusations of coded eugenics messaging. Her latest project is a minute-long spot for Novig, a sports prediction platform, in which she poses nude or barely dressed while using footballs, tennis rackets, hockey gear and other equipment to cover herself. The tagline running through the ad is simple: Novig only takes bets on sports, nothing else. Since it went live in early September, the clip has pulled in hundreds of thousands of views across YouTube and Instagram, and Novig's own reels have crossed 37 million views in just a few days.
Strong criticism has, however, come from women athletes who actually earn money competing. Australian swimming star Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Olympic gold medal winner, described the ad as a slap in the face to all women who have dedicated their lives to perfecting their craft. CNN quoted surfer Felicity Palmateer saying the campaign would negatively impact young girls entering sports, and that it put women's sport "back decades" in just one minute of video footage.
Sprinter Amy Hunt, swimmer Lani Pallister, and boxer Skye Nicholson have posted their own responses, many of which showed training footage along with captions urging people to make the comparison to what the commercial was selling. Writers commenting in The Hindu newspaper and elsewhere raised the same point – that there is a big difference between a female athlete who chooses to be sexy herself and a company that decides her sexuality is what sells best about her.
Sweeney has not addressed the athlete backlash directly. In a statement to Variety, she described the campaign as playful, built around confidence and humour rather than any deeper statement. Separately, she used her Instagram Stories to post images from past editions of ESPN's Body Issue, along with photos of athletes like Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Megan Rapinoe and Rob Gronkowski, all of whom have appeared nude or semi-nude in shoots of their own.
The implication seemed to be that sport and skin have crossed paths before, though she stopped short of directly defending the Novig campaign or engaging with the specific criticism that this ad was never actually about sport in the first place.
For Sweeney the pattern is starting to feel like something she’s seen before: a campaign, then a flood of angry comments online followed by a response that doesn’t feel like an apology and isn’t really a defence either. Some people, on media say it’s clever marketing—getting attention no matter what the tone is. Others think it’s a trend using controversy as a way to grow.
Whatever the reason the Novig ad has done what these kinds of ads usually do: it got people talking, arguing, clicking. For a betting site trying to make itself known that might have been the whole goal all along.
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