'Just sports': Female athletes aren't buying Sydney Sweeney's Novig ad

Sydney Sweeney overestimated her audience's appetite for baring all on-screen in a Sept. 9 advertisement for sports prediction market platform Novig. The campaign, beaming from Times Square billboards, pushed a "Just Sports" message female athletes saw as undermining the recognition women's teams have spent years fighting for.

The commercial features Sweeney posing nearly nude behind strategically placed sports equipment, then in pieces of athletic gear like football pads and a catcher's helmet. In the ad, Sweeney said , "Novig is just sports. So they wanted to show just sports." The ad drew backlash from critics, including female athletes, who said it objectifies women and diminishes their achievements in sports.

"As a company, we're hugely supportive of women's sports. I think it's a huge component of our platform … I think we never intended to portray female sports," Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky said at a Front Office Sports event on Sept. 15. "Sydney's an actress, the biggest movie star in the world. We're a prediction market that is focused on sports. And that was the story she was communicating … It really was Sydney who's driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging."

The message was a hard sell for female athletes, considering no actual athletes appear on screen. Women in sports have faced long-standing scrutiny over how they compete and what they wear, with officials rebuking them for showing too much skin — or too little.

Gymnastics, track athletes, and beach handball players have been policed over leotards, briefs, and bikini bottoms, the athletic wear they need to perform well and comfortably.

After the ad's release, female athletes took to social media, saying it undercuts the fight women have waged over their own uniforms. Four-time Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus asked how society could still be "monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sport."

Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted an Instagram reel of herself competing and training, captioned, "idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like." Female athletes flooded social media with similar posts showing the time, dedication and effort they put into their sports.

"I think after all the work women go through to be respected in their sports and not sexualized as an athlete, it sets us back and puts the attention back on what we're trying to get away from," Mikayla Chavez, president of FSU's club cheerleading team, said to the FSView. "It just reinforces the idea that men only care about sex and sports and gives them a pass to look at her as an object."

What team is Sydney Sweeney playing for?

After the ad was released, Sweeney posted a series of covers from ESPN The Magazine's Body Issue. The special edition featured athletes posing nude or semi-nude, including Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey.

That same day, she told Complex that the ad was "a very simple and playful idea to "really bring the concept of 'just sports' to life."

But Sweeney is not an athlete. The Body Issue photos frame those athletes' strength; they're revealing, but not sexual. Williams' cover represented more than an ideal female body — she showed the dedication it takes to build a strong one.

"Being a female athlete shows that my body is meant for more than what a man wants it to be," Chavez said. "It's meant for movement, hard work, freedom and the strength to do anything a man can do."

The ad was built to reach as much of Novig's target audience as possible: men, who make up most of the sports betting market and probably aren't thinking about her autonomy while watching. While the ad may empower her, the industry weaponizes that sexuality for profit.

As an actress, Sweeney may be acting out of an understanding that her strengths as a performer are often overshadowed by her figure. While she trained to play boxer Christy Martin in "Christy," cruel comments flooded paparazzi bikini photos of her.

Sweeney responded the way she's doing now: she paired the hateful comments with a Rocky-esque training reel to show her dedication to her body and her work. The film went on to flop , opening to $1.3 million in November 2025. Afterward, she wrote on Instagram that "Christy has been the most impactful project of my life."

However, with Novig, it's hard to separate the ad's implication from its intended message. While she may feel empowered, prioritizing the male gaze for buzz isn't sitting right with some of Sweeney's fans.

"I think her ad is a complete flop," FSU media and communications major Grace Healy said to the FSView. "I think that she's exploiting herself and has nothing to do with women's sports. I think too many people are focused on sexualizing themselves and not necessarily what they're made of and what they can do."

Sweeney is not the first to understand that sex sells, and the ad accomplished exactly what it set out to do. However, it heightens concerns about the oversexualization of media. After Sweeney played one of the most famous female boxers of all time, it's surprising to see this shift of tone when she sports the uniform.

Novig climbed from No. 50 in August to No. 11 in the App Store's sports rankings, and its average weekly brand mentions jumped from 392 to 4,633 in the four days after launch, according to social listening firm Peak Metrics. However, only 4% of those posts mentioned the app itself.

The ad's virality shows the nudity was meant to draw audiences to the app. By tying sports betting to the rush of a nude figure, Novig reached the viewers it was after.

Beyond the backlash, the ad highlights competition in the prediction market, where Novig is trying to set itself apart from rivals like Kalshi and Polymarket. Novig's "no wars, deaths or politics" pitch is aimed squarely at them.

By turning attention to Sweeney and sports, Novig avoided any political affiliation and took a bold swing to promote the platform. But it struck out with its female audience and with sports as a whole, forgetting that sports include women's sports, too.

By ignoring the other half of the population's dedication to sports, Novig has pointed to the idea that sports are by men, for men, instead of a community everyone can enjoy.

Alyssa Garcia and Catalina Salgado are Staff Writers for the FSView & Florida Flambeau, the student-run, independent online news service for the FSU community. Email our staff at contact@fsview.com .