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Sydney Sweeney Faces Backlash Over Nude Sports Ad

9 sources · updated 2026-09-16
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0 left · 0 center · 4 right

What happened

Actress Sydney Sweeney starred in a viral advertisement for Novig, a sports prediction-market platform that launched nationwide last month and is restricted to users aged 21 and older. In the commercial, which drew tens of millions of views within days, Sweeney appears nude or nearly nude, her body covered by sports equipment, repeating that the platform is “just sports.” Female athletes including British sprinter Amy Hunt, four-time Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus, British Olympic cyclist Sophie Capewell, and former American gymnast Gracie Kramer publicly condemned the campaign; Hunt, after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship, said, “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like.” Sweeney, who approached Novig about an equity partnership and helped shape the campaign, then posted Instagram images of athletes who had posed nude for magazine shoots, including Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird, and Ronda Rousey, as well as several male athletes. Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky defended the ad, saying the company “never intended to portray female sports,” that Sweeney drove much of the visuals and messaging, and that the controversy forced Novig into “the national discourse.”
Sourcing check · Mostly on the record · 4 articles

2 of 3 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.

What these terms mean and how they're counted
On the record · names a source 2 of 3
On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Felicity Palmateer, Ariarne Titmus, Gracie Kramer, Skye Nicolson and Jacob Fortinsky
Primary evidence · cites a document or data 0 of 3
Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: None cited.
Credits another outlet 1 of 3
The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Daily Mail
Unnamed sources 0 of 3
The main claim is attributed to people who are not identified: “people familiar with the matter”, “officials said”. The count is how many articles do this.
How it developed
When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 15, 09:55 UTC by Daily Wire, naming its source.
Not counted 1
Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Left-leaning coverage never carries Novig's denial that the commercial was about female athletes, the premise on which the athlete protest rests. The company's CEO said they "never intended to portray female sports," a line the New York Post published and the Guardian did not. Readers of the left-leaning account get him on star power and an adult age gate, not on whether the ad was meant as a picture of women in sport. Right-leaning coverage leads with Sweeney's counterpunch; left-leaning coverage leads with the athletes' charge. Breitbart and the Daily Wire headline her posting nude magazine photos of other athletes, while left-leaning pieces open on Olympians answering the ad with race times and training footage. Did Novig add paying users after the spot, or only views of Sydney Sweeney?
Bottom line

The Guardian gives you Amy Hunt on the track; the New York Post is the one that prints Novig's CEO saying they never intended to portray female sports.

The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
  • Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky said the company never intended to portray female sports official statementin New York Post · absent from left-leaning coverage
  • Sweeney told Variety the campaign was about embracing a fun idea and cutting through noise to focus on sports official statementin Breitbart · absent from left-leaning coverage
  • Peak Metrics found 32.8% of posts about the campaign were favorable versus 17.5% unfavorable numberin Business Insider · absent from right-leaning coverage
  • Amy Hunt said her period started the day before the championship and that women's sport is not pretty or glamorous individual casein Guardian · absent from right-leaning coverage
  • Only 4% of social posts about the campaign were about Novig itself numberin Business Insider · absent from right-leaning coverage
  • The nude-athlete photos Sweeney shared were from ESPN's Body Issue, which ran until 2019 contextin Daily Wire · absent from left-leaning coverage
The Left View
Left-leaning outlets frame the commercial as sexualizing women’s sports and erasing the labor of women who compete. The Guardian reports Olympians accusing Sweeney of “demeaning and sexualising women’s sports,” quoting Hunt’s insistence on “21.4. Muscles. Hard work, blood, sweat, tears,” Titmus’s description of the ad as “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft,” and Capewell’s line, “Imagine a world where sexualised representation isn’t the most popular way of seeing women in sport.” Coverage notes a wave of athletes posting competition footage under “this is what a woman in sport looks like,” and Hunt’s remark that being a woman in sport is “not pretty,” “not glamorous,” and “not sexy all the time.” The Hill and Business Insider record the backlash while noting advertising voices who called the spot “cynical soft porn” or “a bit lazy”; Business Insider adds that Novig’s social mentions spiked more than ninefold, that favorable posts outnumbered unfavorable ones in one dataset, and that only 4 percent of posts were about the app itself, raising a gap between awareness and credibility among women.
The Right View
Right-leaning outlets treat the outrage as overstated, commercially unsurprising, or aimed at the wrong target. Breitbart and Fox News present Sweeney’s Body Issue-style Instagram posts as a wordless rebuttal: elite female and male athletes have long posed nude in sports media. The New York Post quotes Fortinsky that Novig is “hugely supportive of women’s sports” and that “Sydney’s an actress” communicating a sports-only product, not depicting female athletes; Sweeney told Variety the campaign was “a fun idea” executed with “confidence, humor and a playful edge.” Daily Wire commentators argue “sex sells” to a young-male betting audience and that Sweeney, a former athlete, was not claiming to stand in for Olympians. They also say the backlash has a “pretty obvious blind spot,” arguing some of the same voices attacking the ad have not similarly denounced transgender athletes in women’s sports, which they call the larger setback for female competitors. Breitbart notes that after an initial gain of about 50,000 Instagram followers, Sweeney lost more than 200,000—less than 1 percent of her audience.
Our Take (balanced)
The left’s strongest argument is experiential and from the field: women who compete say a nude celebrity draped in sports gear collapses “women in sport” into a body for sale, and they answered with performance evidence—Hunt’s race, Kramer’s competition footage, Titmus’s charge that monetizing a woman’s body in a sports frame remains “still a thing.” The right’s strongest argument is categorical: Fortinsky said the company never meant to portray female athletes; the product is a 21+ prediction app marketed with a celebrity equity partner; and Sweeney’s collage of ESPN-style nudes shows that similar imagery of actual athletes has been mainstream without a comparable athlete-led revolt. The unresolved tension is whether a nude sports-adjacent celebrity ad necessarily sexualizes women’s athletics—and therefore harms how female athletes are seen—or whether that reading confuses a betting-app stunt with representation of women who compete, making the protest a category error (and, in the right’s account, a selective one).

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