An advertising campaign featuring American actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked widespread backlash from female athletes who say it is sexualising women in sports.

In the ad for the sports prediction market platform Novig, Sweeney appears with little or no clothing, covering parts of her body with strategically placed footballs and other sports apparel. Many female athletes criticised the ad on social media and called it disrespectful to women.

‘Infuriating’: Athletes react to Sydney Sweeney’s controversial ad

“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. “How do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?”

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British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actor in a post-race interview with the BBC on Sunday, September 13, after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary. “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” she said, looking at the camera. “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”

Former US gymnast Gracie Kramer called the ad infuriating. “I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualised, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,” she said on Instagram.

Kramer posted stories featuring female athletes training with the caption: “What a woman in sports looks like.”

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Sofie Fella, a Chinese-German rugby player, said female athletes can be role models for girls and women because they manage to “untangle” from society’s ideals of beauty and femininity. “And that’s why that Sydney Sweeney ad is so disrespectful to every female athlete in the world,” she said in an Instagram post.

Among others who tore into Sweeney and Novig are British cyclist Sophie Capewell, Welsh Rugby Union player Lisa Neumann, English rugby union player Ellie Boatman and Australian water polo player Tilly Kearns.

Reacting to the controversy, British public relations (PR) consultant Mark Borkowski, who has worked with heavyweights like Soviet and Russian politician Mikhail Gorbachev and Argentine football legend Diego Maradona, called the advert “cynical soft porn,” The Guardian reported.

 

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He noted, however, that the row would eventually benefit Novig, as everyone is now discussing its name. “Sex still sells. And the outrage, the culture war argument gets you one thing: enormous reach,” he said.

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Borkowski added, “Sweeney will make a lot of money over a short span of time. But often it is about how your brand sustains over the years, not in the first flourish. And this sort of promotion can come back to haunt people.”

Novig CEO responds to backlash

However, Jacob Fortinsky, co-founder and CEO of Novig, threw his weight behind the advert and the actor, saying criticising the commercial’s purported adult content is unsound because the sports trading app is restricted to users aged 21 and older.

“Sydney is great at captivating audiences and being the centre of attention. In some sense, it forces us into the national discourse,” he reportedly said. He added that the actor approached Novig, launched last month, about an equity partnership and helped to craft its message.

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A publicist for Sweeney, however, didn’t immediately respond to news agency Associated Press’ request for comment.

Sydney Sweeney reacts to Novig ad controversy

In an apparent reference to the criticism, Sweeney over the weekend posted a series of covers from ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue”, an annual special edition that showed athletes posing nude or semi-nude in a celebration of the diversity of bodies.

Sweeney, a two-time Emmy nominee, starred in and produced last year’s Christy, a biopic of American professional boxer Christy Martin.

This is not the first time her brand partnerships have sparked debate; her 2025 American Eagle campaign, which played on the homophones “jeans” and “genes,” previously triggered widespread online discussion.