A new advertising campaign featuring actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked a wider conversation about the way women and sport are represented in advertising, after several female athletes, including Olympians, criticised the campaign for its sexualised portrayal. The campaign, titled “Just Sports”, promotes Novig, a sports-focused prediction market. Sydney Sweeney appears in a series of provocative scenes involving different sports and sporting equipment, with the campaign built around the idea that Novig focuses exclusively on sports rather than subjects such as politics or other events. The advertisement has since attracted millions of views and significant discussion online.
The response has extended well beyond the usual social media reaction to a celebrity campaign. Female athletes have begun posting their own images and videos from training and competition, drawing a distinction between the way they experience sport and the way it has been presented in the advertisement.
A Campaign Built Around “Just Sports”
The Novig campaign uses Sweeney’s celebrity image alongside recognisable sporting references. In different parts of the advertisement, she appears with equipment associated with sports including basketball, football, baseball, tennis and hockey. The creative concept is deliberately playful and provocative with the actor repeatedly returning to the campaign’s central message of “just sports”.
Sweeney’s involvement with Novig also goes beyond being the face of an advertisement. She joined the company as a strategic partner and equity holder, and has said that she was closely involved in developing the campaign. Novig’s leadership has similarly described her role as extending into the creative and messaging process. In a statement about the campaign, Sweeney described the idea as a fun concept intended to cut through the noise and focus attention on sports, describing the execution as confident, humorous and playful.
Athletes Push Back Against Sydney Sweeney and Novig
The campaign’s reception changed considerably once prominent female athletes began responding to it. Australian Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus was among the most vocal critics. She argued that the campaign undermined women who have spent years building credibility through their performances and questioned the continued use of women’s bodies and sexuality in sports-related marketing.
Other athletes followed with their own responses. Australian swimmer Lani Pallister shared footage highlighting her sporting career, while water polo player Tilly Kearns and Hockeyroos goalkeeper Joc Bartram also criticised the campaign. Canadian skier Cassidy Gray, who competed at the 2026 Winter Olympics, joined the discussion as well.
A recurring theme in their responses has been that women in sport have spent years working to have their athletic ability, discipline and achievements recognised independently of their appearance. Their objection, therefore, is not simply to Sydeny Sweeney appearing in a provocative advertisement, but to the decision to connect that imagery to a campaign specifically selling a sports product. Some athletes responded by posting training and competition footage of their own, effectively offering a different visual definition of what women in sport can look like.
The Intersection of Celebrity, Sport and Advertising
The controversy has also raised a more complicated question about agency.
Sweeney is not being presented as an athlete in the campaign. She is an actor and businesswoman who knowingly participated in the project and holds an equity stake in the company. That has led some commentators to argue that criticism of the campaign should not automatically be interpreted as criticism of Sweeney herself or as evidence that she was being exploited. At the same time, the athletes criticising the campaign are speaking from a very different position. Their professional identities are directly tied to sport, and many have spent years competing at elite levels. Their concern is therefore about how commercial representations of women can influence the broader perception of women’s athletics.
The disagreement highlights the difficulty brands face when using celebrity, sexuality and sport in the same campaign. A concept designed to be provocative can generate enormous attention, but the attention does not necessarily remain focused on the product.
Concluding
There is little doubt that the campaign has succeeded in attracting attention. Novig, a relatively young sports prediction platform, has found itself at the centre of an international conversation involving Hollywood and some of the world’s most recognisable female athletes. That visibility is valuable in an advertising environment where brands increasingly compete not simply for views, but for conversation. Industry observers have pointed to a sharp increase in online mentions of Novig following the campaign’s release.
However, the controversy also illustrates the risks of attention-driven advertising. A campaign can be successful at becoming culturally visible while simultaneously becoming a subject of criticism for reasons its creators did not intend.
For fashion and entertainment marketing, this is becoming increasingly relevant. Celebrity campaigns are no longer consumed in isolation. Audiences respond immediately, athletes can enter the conversation themselves, and the distinction between an advertisement and a broader cultural debate can disappear within hours.
The Novig campaign has consequently become about more than one advertisement. For its critics, it raises questions about the continued sexualisation of women in sports-related imagery. For those defending Sydney Sweeney, it raises questions about whether a woman can make a deliberately provocative commercial choice without that choice automatically being interpreted as a setback for women.
What remains clear is that the campaign has placed two very different ideas of women in sport next to each other: the athlete defined by performance and the celebrity using the visual language of sport as part of a commercial identity. The debate surrounding the advertisement shows just how differently those images can be received.
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