Noah Fries | sports editor

We live in a world where everything is online. It’s a different world than our parents grew up in and a completely different world than what our grandparents grew up in.

In this digital era, social media allows for content to reach thousands, if not millions, of eyes in a heartbeat. There are plenty of reasons why this is a good thing — I love being able to connect with my friends and family that live far away.

One of the biggest facets of social media in today’s society is that content can face a ton of backlash from people all over the world, in the matter of seconds. It’s pretty rare, however, to see a ton of controversy surrounding sports-centric content.

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, actress Sydney Sweeney has, once again, found herself amid a slew of backlash regarding a controversial advertisement — the American Eagle campaign that referenced her “jeans” turned a lot of heads last year. To the surprise of many, however, this time Sweeney has nearly flipped the sporting world upside down.

Sports prediction market Novig — which just went live in January and is comparable to Kalshi or Polymarket — released its first national advertising campaign Sept. 9 that depicted Sweeney nude, posing with various sports equipment like footballs and basketball hoops.

The “Just Sports” campaign was supposed to emphasize that the platform was simply all about predicting and trading sports — no betting on politics or the next rainfall that one might see on Kalshi.

“The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports,” Sweeney said in a statement released on Novig’s website Sept. 9. “The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor and a playful edge.”

Sweeney was right that the ad definitely took confidence, but humor and a playful edge? For an ad for essentially a sports betting app, the campaign was not focused on sports — all it did was create controversy.

The video posted to social media sparked widespread backlash among the women in the sports community — and rightfully so. Countless athletes around the world have sounded off on the ad on social media.

Australian world record-holding swimmer Ariarne Titmus took to Instagram to fight back against the ad.

“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” Titmus wrote. “How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”

After her 200-meter race at the Ultimate Championship in Hungary, British sprinter Amy Hunt used her post-race interview with BBC to voice her opinions on the matter.

“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” Hunt said. “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”

The campaign also sparked a trend on TikTok over the past week, where women in sports would put together clips of the years of hard work and dedication they had put into their sport — in essence, targeting Sweeney by showing what a real woman in sports looks like.

Prominent female athletes, such as three-time All American gymnast Gracie Kramer, have utilized this trend and amassed millions of views.

Other famous college athletes and influencers, such as Livvy Dunne and the Cavinder twins, have also taken part in this trend.

Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky took time Sept. 15 to respond to some of the criticism, but failed to apologize for the widespread outrage — even noting that he was pleased by the “positive feedback overall” that the campaign provided.

“As a company, we’re hugely supportive of women’s sports,” Fortinsky said at the Front Office Sports Asset Class event. “We asked ourselves who would be the best person to grab the attention of the public to make Novig a household name. Sydney approached us, but I think from there it’s a very obvious decision that it’s really the right moment to leverage her platform and her ability to captivate audiences.”

It’s safe to say that the ad campaign succeeded in its goal — I’d never heard of Novig before this, and I’m pretty sure nobody else had either. The last part of this quote, however, is mind-blowing to me; Novig decided it was the right time to utilize Sweeney’s figure to push its company, but all it really did was unite the women in the sports community in defiance of the company and the message it was supposedly trying to portray.

It truly has been amazing to see the sports world, specifically the women, come together and celebrate all that it takes to compete at such a high level. Scrolling through social media and seeing these videos on my feed, as well as seeing the community of women uniting in the comment section, is truly inspiring.

Advertisements that feature hypersexualized content like this can be very damaging, especially to young women looking to enter the sporting world. 

Women all throughout the world, not just in the realm of sports, deserve so much more.

Noah Fries can be reached at friesn@duq.edu