Women all over the world, once again, are put at the centre of the conversation surrounding sports because of controversy, thanks to Euphoria and The Housemaid star Sydney Sweeney. On Wednesday, September 9, Novig, a sports prediction and betting company, released an ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney.
In the ad, Sweeney is depicted almost entirely nude as she shows off various sports balls and equipment, which cover the explicit areas of her body. At the end of the sequence, she tells the audience that Novig, and the ad, by association, focuses primarily on sports. She states, “... No politics. Just you, your takes, and sports”.1
She also states in the ad that “Novig is just sports, so they wanted to show just sports”1. If the message trying to be conveyed is that the ad is solely focused on the sports elements, why did it rub audiences the wrong way?
Contrary to the company’s ‘No Politics’ take, showing the controversial actress nude, while advertising for sports—an already polarizing subject for women,—actually does introduce a political discussion.
Novig CEO, Jacob Fortinsky, told Front Office Sports that Sweeney had crafted the message herself as she was outraged in other sports betting companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which allowed members to profit off of real world events. In a hypocritical turn of events, Sweeney, as a stakeholder in Novig, now personally profits off of politics by invoking this outrage with her ad.
Any attention to the company is now tainted with the controversy surrounding it, which Sweeney directly profits from. The matter at hand is no longer “Just Sports”, as Sweeney assures in the ad, but about what her appearance and actions in the ad have to say about representing women associated with sports.
The choice to pose nude and make her sexuality the true focus of the ad conveys a message that the only way for a woman associated with sports is for her to be sexualized. The only way the world will watch a woman be athletic is if she caters to men’s standards.
This decision by Sweeney and Novig undermines all of the work that women in sports have been doing for years to bring legitimacy to female athletics. For centuries, women in sports have been ridiculed, underfunded, and sexualized, which has caused women’s spaces to plateau or shrink in the athletic sphere.
Even with our very own HEAT, it’s clear that our community does not give as much effort and praise to our female athletes. Homecoming, which took place on September 18, was an obvious example. Both women’s and men’s teams played at the Homecoming celebration, yet the men’s game was set up to be “The Main Event”, though it was an exhibition game with players from the HEAT against other HEAT members.
Critically, when the women played, audiences got to see competitive spirit as the women were playing against another team in the league. Homecoming seemed to center around the men, and showed the women’s game as an afterthought. It felt as if the women were scheduled at the end of the night because they would garner less attention. This was seemingly done strategically as having women be the focus of the night may draw away the crowds.
The idea of entertainment value adds another layer to Sweeney’s ad by catering to men. The sports betting world is dominated by men, so of course Novig would have thought that having a ‘hot’ actress advertising would make sense. The women in the athletic environment were once again, an afterthought. This led to a huge uproar over how women are depicted by the media, and should not be directed by the male gaze. Sweeney obviously caters to her audiences, and knows how to profit off of them, yet fails to think of how her actions impact the rest of the world.
Another issue with the ad is Sweeney herself. In an interview with US Weekly, Sweeney talked extensively about being insecure in her own body. It wasn’t until the role of Cassie, in Euphoria, that she was able to feel confident in her own body and she spoke of dealing with bullying and self-loathing from an early age.
When preparing for the role of Christy Martin in David Michôd’s Christy, Sweeney was met with a lot of criticism about her changing body. Many trolls on the internet deemed her “incredibly ugly”, which led to her speaking out about how her training has changed how she felt in her skin.
This continues to beg the question of why she would agree to an ad like this. Sweeney has experienced the societal barriers that women today face in sports, and is not immune to the criticism of her actions. The decision to pettily disregard these barriers because of her own issues is incredibly discouraging and adds fuel to the roaring fire of injustices in women’s sports.
