Sydney Sweeney under fire from athletes over nude Novig sports ad

Female athletes have responded with outrage and disbelief to a “hypersexualized” commercial campaign depicting a naked or barely clothed Sydney Sweeney posing with sporting equipment.

According to Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer, the promotion for Novig, a sports prediction market in the United States, is “very damaging” to female athletes and young females interested in sports.

Sydney Sweeney appears naked or lightly clad in a series of images and videos posted Wednesday, carrying American footballs, a tennis racket, or a baseball bat. One image shows her lying naked on top of a basketball.

Novig also ran an ad on its Instagram reels, which garnered 37 million views in four days.

Palmateer was one of several female athletes who criticized the campaign.

“Just absolute utter disbelief, incredibly disappointing, like, how far you can put women’s sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial,” she said to CNN, adding that the campaign “is very damaging, especially for young females getting into sport, for females in sport, for females in general, just hypersexualized content.”

“We want to be valued for what we can do, not what we look like,” Palmateer added.

Australian four-time Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus posted a response to the campaign on her Instagram stories.

“I wasn’t going to share this as I didn’t want to give this any more attention. But I can’t keep my mouth shut,” she said, according to CNN affiliate 9News.

“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” Titmus wrote.

“I wasn’t going to share this as I didn’t want to give this any more attention. But I can’t keep my mouth shut,” she said, according to CNN affiliate 9News.

“Not only is this a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, but every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is — teamwork, friendship, dedication, excellence, unity … the list goes on.”

Australian swimmer Lani Pallister was another of the athletes to hit back, posting a compilation video of her training and competing, with an overlay that reads: “Don’t know what Sydney thinks sport looks like, but THIS is what sport looks like.”

Fellow Australian, boxer Skye Nicholson, posted a similar video in response to the ad.

“Giving the ad campaign exactly what they wanted, but honestly these companies need to do better 🙄 Stop sexualising women in #sport,” reads the caption.

Sydney Sweeney appeared to respond to the backlash Sunday by posting a series of photos from ESPN The Magazine’s annual “Body Issue.”

The yearly edition featured dozens of athletes either naked or semi-nude during an 11-year run that came to an end in 2019.

This is not the first time that Sweeney’s involvement in an advertising campaign has caused controversy.

In summer 2025, she featured in a campaign for US clothing brand American Eagle, which some claimed promoted eugenics and White supremacism.

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,” she says in one ad. In another, she claims that “my body’s composition is determined by my genes.”

Sydney Sweeney did not respond to the campaign’s outcry right away, leaving people to make their own conclusions about how she felt about the commercial.

Then, in November, GQ magazine ran an on-camera interview with Sydney Sweeney about the repercussions. Sweeney responded by expressing surprise at the reaction, but she did not apologize, instead repeating her passion for jeans and stating that she is not there to tell people what to think.

When asked whether she wanted to clarify her intentions, the celebrity responded with the now-viral soundbite: “I believe that when I have an issue to speak about, people will listen.”