An advertising campaign starring American actor Sydney Sweeney has faced widespread backlash from female athletes who argue it sexualizes women in sports.
In the commercial for sports prediction market platform Novig, Sweeney appears with little or no clothing, strategically concealing parts of her body behind footballs and athletic apparel.
Numerous female competitors criticized the campaign on social media, calling it disrespectful to women.
“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. “How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”
British sprinter Amy Hunt spoke directly to the actor in a post-race BBC interview on Sunday after placing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” she stated while looking into the camera. “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”
Former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer similarly condemned the advertisement as infuriating.
“I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,” she posted on Instagram.
Kramer subsequently posted stories showing female athletes training, adding the caption: “What a woman in sports looks like.”
Sofie Fella, a Chinese-German rugby player, noted that female athletes offer strong role models for girls and women because they successfully “untangle” from social expectations of beauty and femininity.
“And that’s why that Sydney Sweeney ad is so disrespectful to every female athlete in the world,” she expressed in an Instagram post.
Novig did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment, and a publicist for Sweeney also failed to respond immediately to a request for comment.
Seemingly addressing the backlash over the weekend, Sweeney uploaded several covers from ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue,” an annual feature displaying athletes nude or semi-nude to celebrate diverse physical forms.
Sweeney, a two-time Emmy nominee, produced and starred in last year’s “Christy,” a biographical movie depicting American professional boxer Christy Martin.
This is not the first time her commercial partnerships have sparked debate; her 2025 American Eagle campaign, which played on the homophones “jeans” and “genes,” previously sparked extensive discussion online.
