The actress is an equity holder in the prediction market platform, a detail disclosed in its press release but absent from the ad itself, as women working in sports lead the backlash.
More than a year after her American Eagle controversy, Sydney Sweeney is facing backlash over another campaign, this time her promotion for the sports trading app Novig.
Sweeney partnered with the platform Wednesday, both starring in the ad and joining the company as a strategic partner and equity holder. In the spot, she poses nude with various sports equipment and uniforms covering her, repeating the word “sports” over a montage. The campaign’s stated premise, per the press release, is that Sweeney is “putting the focus exactly where it belongs, on ‘Just Sports.’”
The response has gone in the opposite direction.
The Criticism Is Coming From Inside the Industry
The sharpest pushback has come from women who actually work in sports. Marissa Womack, manager of game day promotions and programming for the minor league Harrisburg Senators, laid out the objection in a TikTok video that drew significant engagement.
“This isn’t about me being jealous or insecure of her,” Womack said. “It’s about the fact that this is already a male-dominated field where we are constantly having to prove why we belong. It’s about having passions and joy working in this industry, and when the only representation is sexualization, you see less and less young women wanting to pursue this industry.”
That framing has been echoed widely. “There is 0 reason to have somebody naked just saying sports over and over again,” one user commented on a video from Sam Tirelli, a studio and field director at a Maryland sports network. “You can make amazing ads and content without constantly having women be sexualized.” Another argued the campaign is “exactly why women in sports aren’t taken seriously.”
The reaction also reached viewers who encountered the spot unexpectedly. “I couldn’t believe when that ad came on the TV,” one TikTok user wrote. “I had my two children in the living room. I had to yell at them to look away.”
The engagement numbers themselves became part of the argument. “22.4 million views but not even 1 million likes,” one Instagram commenter noted. “Why? Because this is not what we want for our sports ads. Especially when kids like and follow sports as well.” Other descriptors in Sweeney’s comments included “disgusting,” “pathetic,” “sad” and “inappropriate.”
The Part of the Deal the Ad Doesn’t Mention
Here’s the detail that complicates this beyond a taste argument. Sweeney isn’t a hired spokesperson. She’s an equity holder in Novig, which Novig disclosed in its press release and which was reported the same day.
But the ad itself contains no such disclosure. The creative is Sweeney, nude, saying “sports.” There’s no on-screen text, no verbal acknowledgment, nothing indicating the person selling you a trading platform profits directly when you sign up for it. A viewer encountering the spot on television or social, which is nearly all of them, has no way of knowing she has a financial position in the outcome.
That’s not a violation of anything. FTC endorsement guidelines are murkier for equity partnerships than for straightforward paid promotion, and the press-release disclosure is a real one. But it’s a live question in a sector where regulators are already paying close attention, and it points at something the prediction market industry hasn’t fully resolved: what obligations attach to people with financial positions who are also driving public participation.
An Industry Where That Question Is Getting Sharper
The timing is notable, because market integrity has become the defining competitive issue in this category.
Federally regulated Kalshi has spent the past year building out an enforcement apparatus that has no real equivalent among its competitors. The company has opened more than 150 investigations this year, blocked more than 100 potential insider trades through pre-trade screening, referred over 20 cases to law enforcement, and taken five disciplinary actions.
It runs KYC and anti-money-laundering checks on every user, reports all trades to the CFTC daily, and maintains a surveillance team monitoring order books around the clock.
It has also built out the governance layer, forming an independent Surveillance Audit Committee that issues public quarterly reports, bringing in former Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson as an advisor, and partnering with Solidus Labs and Wharton Forensic Analytics Lab director Daniel Taylor on trade surveillance.
Athletes, coaches, referees and league personnel are screened through a partnership with the NHL and integrity provider IC360. For markets flagged as carrying elevated insider risk, the exchange now collects employment information before allowing participation.
Those systems have produced actual cases. Kalshi’s surveillance flagged trades by former Congressman George Santos tied to State of the Union markets, referred the matter to the CFTC, and is pursuing its own enforcement action, saying it will work to reimburse affected traders if penalties are recovered. It also caught a MrBeast employee and a long-shot California gubernatorial candidate making insider trades earlier this year.
“Prediction markets need to be safe spaces to trade,” Kalshi head of enforcement Robert DeNault said in announcing the expanded measures. “Kalshi is committed to leading the industry on market integrity.”
None of that speaks to Novig specifically, and nothing about the Sweeney campaign suggests any trading violation. But it does illustrate the standard the category is being measured against right now, and the gap between building trust through compliance infrastructure and building attention through a nude celebrity saying “sports” is not a small one.
A Familiar Position for Sweeney
This is not new territory. Her 2025 American Eagle campaign drew widespread backlash over the tagline “Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans” and an accompanying line about genes determining traits, which critics read as a eugenics allusion. American Eagle eventually responded publicly, saying the campaign “is and always was about the jeans. Her jeans. Her story.”
Sweeney has said the reaction surprised her and has repeatedly declined to discuss politics. “I’ve never been here to talk about politics. I’ve always been here to make art, so this is just not a conversation I want to be at the forefront of,” she told Cosmopolitan. “I’m not a political person. I’m in the arts. I don’t believe in hate in any form.”
The Novig ad actually nods at that same instinct. “No betting on wars or deaths, and no politics,” Sweeney says in the spot, distinguishing the platform from broader prediction markets. “Just you, your takes and sports.”
Of the campaign itself, she said in a statement: “The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor and a playful edge.”
Whatever it accomplished, the focus is now anywhere but “just sports”
