The popular sports betting app “Novig” released an advertisement starring actress Sydney Sweeney to promote the app. Sweeney is seen wearing nothing but sports attire, or covering herself in different sports balls and bats.
This ad received nothing but controversy from women in sports, and for all the right reasons. This ad sets female athletes back as a sexuality due to the sexism produced by this ad. “Think you know sports,” Sweeney asks. “Prove it.”
While it is not targeted towards women, it hypersexualizes the female gender because Novig used an attractive female star to target their audience.
Sweeney has lost over 200 thousand followers after this ad due to the backlash of nude promotion, which totals less than 1% of her total audience of more than 25 million people.
This is not the first time Sweeney has used her body to promote a brand; in fact, she did one in July of 2025, which was still controversial for promoting the fact that she has “great jeans.”
According to USA Today, Sweeney promoted the homophones “jeans” and “genes” in a way that abused being a conventionally attractive white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes as the face of “good genes.”
Being a woman in today’s society is already hard, facing consistent sexism and the imbalance in salaries, but being a female athlete makes the competition so much harder. As a woman who has competed in a male-dominated sport, there will always be a man who is faster, stronger or even better than me, but that’s just biological. Women have to fight for their place in this world, even politically.
Women know sports, Sweeney. This is not just a hobby or something to “bet” on; it’s a lifestyle, a reason to stay, and a place to feel like we belong. So, Sweeney, I do think I know sports, and I know that what I have defended myself in is not something for an attractive blue-eyed blonde to tell me I don’t know them.