Did The Novig x Sydney Sweeney Campaign Tell Women Anything New About Modern Day Sexism?

The social media fallout, what women in sports really think, and whether sex still sells when reputation is the price.

Sydney Sweeney is no stranger to public controversy. The Euphoria actress has built a career straddling the line between Hollywood leading lady and cultural lightning rod. So when sports betting platform Novig dropped their latest campaign featuring Sweeney nude, her body covered only by tennis rackets, footballs, hockey sticks and basketballs, the internet did exactly what Novig wanted it to do. It talked.

The concept, as explained through Sweeney's own voiceover, is disarmingly simple: "Novig is just sports. So they wanted to show, just sports."

“No betting on wars, no deaths, no politics.” Sweeney says, sprawled out naked on a pool table.

Just sports. And, apparently, just a woman's body as the vehicle to communicate that.

The Reaction to The Novig x Sydney Sweeney Campaign Launch

Since the campaign launched, Sweeney has reportedly lost an estimated 200,000 followers, according to social media analytics firm Social Blade. Whether that figure reflects genuine public disapproval or the inevitable volatility of viral controversy is debatable. 

Under @novig's launch post were hundreds of thousands of negative comments:

“Thank you for undoing everything women try to build in sports (smiley face)” says @ameliaontrack.

“This has set women back 300 years.” Said @_caseymai_.

“You broke Instagram.” said another user.

The creative decision has been queried by many. Nonetheless, female athletes, activists, and modern-day marketers aren’t naïve to the fact that sex sells. Especially to Novig's core audience demographic is, by their own analytics, overwhelmingly young mobile-first men.

The Overplay of Shockvertising, and Who It's Really For

Reports of so-called "shockvertising" and rage-farming have immeasurably surged in recent years. The tactic is defined as advertising designed to shock its way into public memory through graphic imagery, overt sexuality, or taboo-shredding visuals. To the modern marketer, however, the shock is somewhat performative, because as attention spans shrink, pushed further by the relentless scroll of social media and now the creeping displacement of human curiosity by AI, the ante must perpetually be upped.

I know this… because the moment I laid eyes on this ad, I went directly to my laptop and started writing. Which is, of course, exactly what Novig's marketing team banked on.

And as we have always known: if anything sells, it's sex. Or rather, if anything gets people talking, it's sex.

Whether it actually sells anything is a far more complicated (and a slightly hilarious) question.

According to Media Analyser, almost half of men declare that they like sex-related campaigns. But it turns out that less than 10% of men exposed to the sexual ads were able to recall the brand that was advertised (compared to 19.8% for non-sexual ads).

The Vampire Effect

Media Analyzer have a name for what happens when sexual imagery is used in advertising: the vampire effect. The concept is as elegant as it is damning. Erotic imagery draws the viewer's eye so completely that it cannibalises the actual message, the brand, the product, the point. According to research cited by media analyst firm Media Analyzer, fewer than 10% of men exposed to sexual advertisements were able to recall the brand being advertised, compared to 19.8% for non-sexual ads. Almost half of male respondents declared they enjoy sex-related campaigns. Less than a tenth of them remembered who made them.

Sex, in other words, overshadows the message. The viewer gets the dopamine hit, whilst the brand gets online hysteria, followed typically by radio silence.

For a sports betting platform attempting to distinguish itself in a saturated market, one has to ask: was this the most effective use of Sydney Sweeney's profile, or simply the most predictable one?

Who’s To Blame? 

What people have grown tired of talking about is Sweeney’s resounding part to play in the sexualisation of women. She is a producer, businesswoman and performer who has repeatedly chosen to profit from baring her body in film and advertising, most recently with American Eagle. The question is whether this can be read as ownership of the female body through a feminist lens, similarly to her recent foray into women’s sport as a successful 90’s female boxer in the 2025 docudrama, Christy, or to make a mockery of what women have fought for.

In her GQ interview with features director Katherine Stoeffel, Sweeney reduced the controversy to: “I did a jean ad” before insisting, “the ad spoke for itself.” The jean/gene pun, paired with blonde hair, pale skin and blue eyes, made the politics of the image difficult for press to ignore. We all remember that.

And yet, the person least present in the conversation is Sweeney herself. She is positioned as a supposed ‘feminist’ commentator while offering little beyond the idea that the work should speak for itself.

Novig, through Sweeney's own voiceover, explicitly distances itself from anything beyond sport:

"No betting on wars, or deaths, and no politics."  The irony, eh?

@hopexlifts, a sportswoman and content creator, shares her thoughts:

“Putting the brand aside, I think the idea that “sex sells” and using a woman’s body as a prop to sell more is disappointing. Women have worked incredibly hard to earn the respect and visibility they have in sport today, and campaigns like this risk shifting the focus back onto appearance and sexuality rather than talent and achievement,” said Hope.

Final Thoughts: Is The Ad A Setback Or Is It Sexually Liberating?

Since the campaign launched, women across the world have responded in comments, reels and grid posts, questioning what exactly women’s sport has to do with a naked woman dressed in nothing but sports equipment.

The “Respectfully Sweeney, WTF was that advert?” reaction has become a trend in its own right, with women offering their own personal takes on the sporting story Novig set out to tell.

We asked Hope Whitfield, who shared her own response online, what better representation could look like:

“First and foremost, use women who actually play sport and are athletes. A campaign like Nike’s One Day We Won’t Need This Day is a great example. It celebrates women for the athletes they are, while recognising how far women’s sport has come. For me, that’s what genuine representation looks like: putting the focus on talent, achievement and the women who are actually driving the sport forward.” said Hope.

And yet, not everyone is convinced the campaign deserves the outrage. One anonymous TikToker offered up a fresh interpretation:

“Everyone is missing the point. The ad did exactly what they wanted it to do. It’s PR marketing at its finest. Most of the world hasn’t heard of Novig before this ad. Now we have everyone and their nan talking about it.”

Which is a difficult perspective to argue with.

When Does A Naked Women Become Sexual?

It's dangerous territory to assume that the moment a naked woman appears in public media, it's deemed as sexual content. Yet, many commenters argue that Sweeney's established internet reputation, her history of sexualised campaigns, and the undeniably sensual nature of the video itself make any other depiction difficult to sustain.

Some have gone further, suggesting that women who wear revealing gym wear forfeit their right to comment entirely.

Qualified personal trainer Megan Thompson-O'Connor shared her thoughts in her reel caption: "Wearing gym clothes is not the same thing as deliberately using the sexualisation of women to market a product. The clothes we wear are specifically designed and manufactured for women to exercise in."

 The distinction, she implies, is intent. 

Because perhaps the most revelatory thing about the Novig campaign is not whether it was sexist, feminist, clever, lazy, empowering or regressive. It is that we are still debating it at all, and somewhere, presumably, a marketing lead is refreshing Novig’s brand mentions and calling it a win.

The campaign promised “just sport”. What it actually gave us was sex, controversy, feminism, advertising theory, brand awareness and several thousand people arguing in the comments section. 

So, did the advert tell women anything we didn’t already know about modern-day sexism?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments on our recent social media post: @heroptimalmagazine

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All statistics sourced from Media Analyzer and Social Blade via Variety.