Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad has landed the actress in a backlash, with women working in sport arguing that a nude campaign for a sports trading platform sets the wrong tone entirely.
The minute-long campaign puts Sweeney in front of the camera with nothing but sports equipment, balls and uniforms, positioned to cover her, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The ad hammers one point throughout, that Novig is a platform built around sport rather than anything else.
This is not a standard endorsement deal either. Sweeney came on board as a strategic partner and holds equity in Novig, which makes the campaign partly hers to defend and explains why she has been the one answering for it rather than a brand spokesperson.
What the Sydney Sweeney Novig ad actually shows
The idea, as Sweeney describes it, is that stripping everything else out of frame leaves the viewer with nothing to look at but the sport itself.
That is the argument, and it is the one she has stuck to while the comments pile up. Sydney Sweeney said in a statement:
“The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humour and a playful edge.”
Why the Novig ad backlash came from women in sport
The Sydney Sweeney pushback has come hardest from women who work in and around sport, and their argument is not about prudishness.
It is that the industry has spent years fighting to have female athletes judged on what they can do rather than how they look, and a nude ad undoes some of that.
One recurring line from critics is that they are former athletes themselves, women who have fielded sexualised comments in their own careers and who read the campaign as a step backwards.
The complaint is less about Sweeney personally and more about a conversation women in the industry have been having for decades.
How Sydney Sweeney answered the Novig ad backlash
Sweeney did not issue a second statement. She went to Instagram and posted old ESPN magazine covers featuring athletes photographed nude or close to it, Serena Williams among them, which reads as a fairly pointed question about where exactly the line is supposed to sit.
That comparison is doing a lot of work. The covers she pointed to were athletes framing their own bodies in their own terms, while the Novig campaign is an actress selling a betting product, and the critics see those as two different things.
No word has come of the campaign being pulled, and given how invested she is in the business, the incentive to ride it out is obvious. Whether the ad runs its full course or gets quietly recut will say more about the platform’s nerve than about anything her critics post next.
