Sydney Sweeney's nude ad for prediction platform Novig has angered Olympians like Ariarne Titmus. Playful confidence, like ESPN's Body Issue, or sexualising women's sport again?
In the ad she is covered only by basketballs and footballs, and Titmus called it a step backward for women's sports. Sweeney says the campaign, titled "Just Sports", was meant to put the focus entirely on sports with a playful edge.
What happened
Sydney Sweeney appears nude, covered only by sports equipment like basketballs and footballs, in an ad campaign called 'Just Sports' for Novig, a sports prediction-market platform, released in September 2026. Multiple Olympic and elite athletes publicly condemned the campaign as sexualizing women in sport, including Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus ('I can't describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this'), gymnast Gracie Kramer, water polo player Tilly Kearns, and field hockey player Jocelyn Bartram, along with the Female Athlete Project account. Sweeney defended the ad as being about 'embracing a fun idea' meant to 'cut through the noise,' pointing to ESPN's long-running nude Body Issue as precedent.
Why people disagree
Critics argue the ad reduces female athletes and, by extension, Sweeney herself to sexual objects in an industry already fighting to be taken seriously for skill rather than looks, and that using a non-athlete actress's nudity to sell a betting-adjacent product trivializes real athletic achievement. Defenders, including Sweeney, argue the ad is a lighthearted marketing concept no different in spirit from ESPN's Body Issue, that adult women have the right to make choices about their own image without being told it sets back other women, and that the backlash risks becoming its own form of policing women's choices.
What's still unclear
It's unclear whether Novig will pull or edit the ad in response to the criticism, or whether the controversy will affect Sweeney's other endorsement deals. The broader question — whether this differs meaningfully from athlete-consented projects like the Body Issue given Sweeney isn't an athlete and the context is a betting-adjacent product rather than sport itself — remains a live point of disagreement rather than a settled fact.
Sources
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