Sydney Sweeney has riled up some leading female athletes with her risqué ad campaign for Novig, the sports betting platform.
The “Euphoria” actress is scantily dressed in what is Novig’s first national ad campaign, and repeats its “Just Sports” slogan. In some shots, the 29-year-old holds strategically placed sports equipment. Sweeney is an equity holder in Novig, which was started by Jacob Fortinsky and Kelechi Ukah as Harvard University undergraduate students in 2021 and launched nationwide last month under a federally regulated framework.
Leading female athletes like Australian Olympic swimmer and water polo player Tilly Kearns pushed back against Sweeney’s take on sports via Instagram. Kearns posted Sunday how she “hated” Sweeney’s new sports ad and shared “some real women sports content” of female athletes training and competing.
Other current and former elite athletes like Lani Pallister, Gracie Kramer, Jocelyn Bartram, Julia Mancuso and Brianna Throssell have responded with their own social media posts that show off their athleticism. After competing in the 200m at the World Athletics Ultimate Championships, the sprinter Amy Hunt told the BBC in a postrace interview, “That was incredible, to be part of such an incredible race — Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like. 21.4, muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears, a beautiful evening.”
A media request to Novig was unreturned Monday.
As of February, Novig had raised more than $105 million, which was led by Pantera Capital. In a Sept. 9 press release that was issued by Novig, Sweeney said the campaign was about embracing a fun idea. “The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports,” she said in the press release.
Sweeney stoked the controversy by sharing images of barely clothed athletes like Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey and Sue Bird from ESPN magazine’s 2019 “Body” issue. And on Sunday “The Housemaid” actress posted more images of her nearly nude self from the Novig shoot holding a tennis racket, footballs and other sports equipment.
University of New Haven’s Ceyda Mumcu said the backlash from Olympians and female athletes isn’t “oversensitivity,” and that it tracks with three decades of research. “Experimental studies consistently show that when women are presented sexually in a sports context, viewers rate them as less competent and less deserving of respect,” she said.
Mumcu, the coauthor of “Sports Analytics,” said researchers find that sexualized imagery makes audiences less likely to watch or follow women’s sports. “A campaign that markets ‘Just Sports’ through a nude body isn’t neutral or just about sports,” she said. “It’s the exact framing that decades of research shows undermines women’s athletic legitimacy.”
In a Sept. 9 press release that was issued by Novig, Sweeney said the campaign was about embracing a fun idea. “The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports,” she said in the press release.
Mumcu said Sweeney’s “Body Issue” comparison “misses the point.” She said, “Those images foreground athletes and their physical capability, while this one uses sport as a prop for a celebrity’s body to sell a betting product.”
Ellen J. Staurowsky, a sports media researcher and former longtime professor, said when women are presented as sex objects to the male audience, that undermines their ability to be seen as equals within a sports context. She said that suggesting the audience pretend that the images are not what they are is “another insult.”
“They’re basically saying that they can do whatever they want to make money.”
In an interview with an ABC affiliate in Australia, Kearns said she had not anticipated that her post would generate such a “humongous” response from other athletes. But she also acknowledged how their response draws more attention to the campaign, too. “I am sure the company is absolutely stoked about this,” Kearns said. “This is exactly what they wanted. People might say, ‘We’re just feeding the beast here.’ But it was going to get people’s eyeballs [on it] regardless of us rebelling against it.”
Kearns said if female athletes had not spoken up, other businesses would say, “‘Well, that worked.’ Now, other brands can jump on board and fight the good fight so that we can be taken more seriously, which we have been lately. It’s awesome — but this is a step backward.”
Sew Branded’s chief executive officer Scott Woodward said although Sweeney is a talented and beautiful actress who is sought after by global brands, he found Novig’s creative choices “perplexing, given current marketing insights and the cultural zeitgeist.” He said “women of all ages are striving for more inspirational and aspirational images to represent their achievements, talent and contributions.”
Last year Sweeney’s “I have great jeans” ad campaign for American Eagle Outfitters kicked off another backlash. That campaign generated between 40 billion and 44 billion impressions, and later scaled up to 56 billion for subsequent campaign phases, according to Variety.
