A provocative new ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney for the sports betting and prediction platform Novig has sparked intense global debate.
The commercial, which features a nude Sweeney posing strategically behind sports equipment while promoting the app, has racked up tens of millions of viral views. However, the campaign has also drawn fierce backlash from professional female athletes who accuse the advertisement of unnecessarily sexualizing women in sports.
Here’s the ad, in case your algorithm has been miraculously hiding it:
Among the most prominent voices criticizing the campaign is Australian big-wave surfer and World Surf League (WSL) commentator Felicity Palmateer. Speaking out in an interview with CNN, Palmateer expressed deep frustration over the commercial’s message and its potential impact on future generations of athletes.
Palmateer discussed it via video, linked here, and below:
“Just absolute utter disbelief, incredibly disappointing, like, how far you can put women’s sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial,” Palmateer told CNN. “It is very damaging, especially for young females getting into sport… We want to be valued for what we can do, not what we look like.”
The pushback quickly spread across social media, where Palmateer joined a collective movement of female athletes on Instagram using training reels and competition footage to reclaim the narrative of women in sport.
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Highlighting the contrast between athletic reality and Hollywood marketing, Palmateer posted on Instagram to emphasize what sports truly mean to female competitors:
“Don’t know what Sydney thinks sport looks like, but THIS is what sport looks like. Real sport is about teamwork, dedication, excellence, and strength—not hypersexualized content designed to sell a gambling app.”
In response to the uproar, Sweeney shared archival photos from ESPN’s “Body Issue” on her social channels, suggesting a double standard.
Nevertheless, Palmateer and her fellow athletes maintain that marketing campaigns should celebrate women for their physical achievements rather than reducing them to visual props.
Thoughts?
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