Is It Really “Just Sports?”

By Sophie Gvenetadze ’28

It is difficult to name an advertisement, sports-related or otherwise, that has gained global traction and sparked controversy as rapidly as the new Novig ad. In her partnership with sports prediction platform Novig, Sydney Sweeney starred in a national ad campaign titled “Just Sports.” Though it is easy to criticize the video for its hypersexualized nature, which features Sweeney covering her body with athletic equipment, the global attention the ad has gained proves, in a highly problematic manner, that sex really does sell.

In the days following the ad’s launch, social media outlets began to flood with a myriad of viewer opinions. The defensive perspective stands that the campaign’s goal was simply to advertise Novig’s prediction system, with CEO Fortinsky stating, “it really was Sydney who was driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging.” But regardless of Novig’s claim that they are “hugely supportive of women’s sports” and they “never intended to portray female [athletes]”, the ad’s backlash speaks for itself. The message currently being conveyed by the video is that a woman posing with sports equipment draws far more attention than a woman actually competing does. Moreover, the advertisement risks tying visibility and attention for women’s sports to sex appeal rather than performance. When a campaign with such imagery generates over fifty million views in less than two weeks, it’s not hard for the public to realize what actually “sells” women’s sports.

Pivoting back to the visuals’ problematic premise, the extreme backlash helped the ad gain such a widespread reach in the first place. In fact, the Novig ad is not the first of Sweeney’s projects to spark similar engagement: her 2025 American Eagle Campaign “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” went viral forsupposedly promoting white supremacy. The internet’s current opinions against the Novig ad are exactly what the company and Sweeney were looking to generate. Although the actress lost over 200,000 followers in 48 hours, Novig’s digital visibility multiplied more than ninefold. The platform has surged 40 places in the App Store’s sports app rankings. It is actively outcompeting major rivals like Kalshi and Polymarket. Yet, the contrast between Novig’s recent success and Sweeney’s immense public fallout poses questions about whether viewers’ anger is correctly aimed.

In light of the controversy, women worldwide are joining a countermovement led by British sprinter Amy Hunt, who stated, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like… hard work, blood, sweat, tears,” at the World Athletics Championship four days after the Novig ad’s launch. Hunt’s remark inspired a trend across all social media platforms, where female athletes post videos of themselves competing, adding the caption “this is what women in sport look like” in response to Sweeney’s saying “think you know sports?” in the advertisement. The trend beautifully captures the efforts and resilience of female athletes and is actually beginning to outpace the ad itself, juxtaposing against Sweeney’s saying “you can’t trade this, I just look good here,” and promising that Novig has “no betting on wars, or deaths, or politics.”

The advertisement has unsurprisingly come to the attention of Milton Academy students. When asked how she wants to see female athletes represented in the media, student-athlete Sasha Bahia ’28, who plays for the soccer, hockey, and track teams, stated: “We just want to be recognized for how much time and effort we put into our sports because we love what we do.” Bahia adds that “it was really hard to see the Sydney Sweeney ad on the internet because of how much it misrepresented women in sports.” Furthermore, she comments on the unfair playing field of women’s vs. men’s sports, and how the advertisement has further elevated the pedestal men already stood on.

As easy as it may be to blame Sweeney for the problematic message being articulated by the Novig ad, it is important to keep in mind that the public played a key role in further amplifying it. Novig capitalized on visibility, Sweeney capitalized on controversy, and viewers, in their outrage, helped fuel both. Perhaps the real question to be asked here isn’t who deserves the blame, but rather why an ad that reduces women to their bodies was destined to succeed in the first place.