Sydney Sweeney is facing backlash over a new Novig campaign that puts her in multiple shots of a mostly naked body covered with sports balls and uniforms. The response came fast after she partnered with the sports trading app on Wednesday and joined it as a strategic partner and equity holder.
That is why the Novig Sydney Sweeney Ad is drawing searches now: the campaign landed as a fresh push for a new platform that launched last month, and the first reaction was not a debate about the app’s mechanics but criticism of the imagery. Novig says its platform combines the mechanics of modern financial exchanges with a sports-first experience, and it says it is the only prediction market with a 21+ age requirement.
Marissa Womack, who posted a TikTok video about the ad, said the backlash is not about jealousy or insecurity. It is about representation in a male-dominated field, she said, where women are constantly made to prove they belong. Her argument was that when the only way women are shown is through sexualization, fewer young women will want to enter the industry.
Other viewers were even blunter. One TikTok user said the ad came on while their two children were in the living room and that they had to tell them to look away. An Instagram user complained that posts in bikinis are removed while the platform allowed this ad to stay up, and another pointed to its 22.4 million views but not even 1 million likes as proof that the public was rejecting it. Comments calling the spot disgusting, pathetic, sad and inappropriate spread across the conversation around the campaign.
The friction is hard to miss. Sweeney said the campaign was meant to keep the focus entirely on sports and called it a fun idea with confidence, humor and a playful edge, but the version that viewers saw centered on her body in a way many said undercut that message. More than a year after her American Eagle ad stirred its own controversy, she is back in the middle of another debate about how her image is being used.
What happens next is simple: the unanswered question is whether Novig will defend the creative choice, change the campaign or let the backlash run. Reached for comment, representatives for Novig and Sweeney did not respond by publication time, and that silence now sits beside the ad itself.
