Why the Sydney Sweeney Novig ad is so controversial: the backlash is now led by Olympic gold medalists
Sydney Sweeney has once again done the thing she does best, which is star in an ad that makes the entire internet clock out of work early. This time it's for Novig, a sports prediction market you had never heard of until approximately Tuesday.
The concept: Sweeney "wearing just sports" — covering herself with footballs, tennis rackets, and a basketball hoop while repeating the word "sports" like a woman under a spell. The campaign is called "Just Sports." Subtle, this is not.
The medal count of the outraged
The plot twist is who showed up to object. Not a think piece. Not a brand-safety consultant. Actual Olympians, arriving in formation like it's a relay final.
"I can't describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this," wrote Ariarne Titmus, four-time Olympic gold medalist, who called the ad a kick in the face to every woman who's dedicated her life to sport.
Gymnast Gracie Kramer kicked off the counter-programming with a reel of herself actually competing — chalk, muscles, physics — captioned to the effect that this is what a woman in sport looks like. Nearly a million likes later, half the sporting world had joined in:
- Australian water polo medalist Tilly Kearns went the least diplomatic route: "I absolutely f**king hate Sydney Sweeney's new sports ad."
- British sprinter Amy Hunt used a post-race BBC interview to present her own body of work: muscles, blood, sweat, tears.
- World champion boxer Skye Nicolson threaded the needle — athletes looking hot because of sport is fine; using sex to sell sport is the problem.
- Even the Australian Institute of Sport posted a "THIS is sport" montage over the ad's own backing track, which is institutional shade of the highest order.
Sweeney's response, such as it is
Did Sweeney apologize? Reader, she did not. She posted ESPN Body Issue covers of nude athletes — Serena Williams included — to her Instagram, the visual equivalent of "and what about this, then?"
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Which, fine, is a position. The counter-position writes itself: those athletes earned those covers with their sport, and Sweeney's sport is being Sydney Sweeney. Meanwhile the ad has cleared 33 million views, Sweeney is an equity holder in Novig, and a company nobody could pronounce last month is now a household name. Everyone is furious. Everyone is winning. It's the "great jeans" playbook running on schedule, and I suspect we'll be back here in six months when she fronts a campaign for, I don't know, artisanal cement.
Previously we wrote: Ingrid Bergman Just Hated Making This 34%-Rated Hitchcock Drama: "Suffer and Loathe"
