“It’s just sports, obviously.” The phrase posted by Novig under their recent advertisement from Sep. 9, has been liked by over 1 million people on Instagram alone. The young company, which is a betting platform exclusively for sports, has recently skyrocketed into the forefront of pop culture after releasing an ad featuring actress Sydney Sweeney repeatedly saying “it’s just sports.”

Sweeney, who appeared fully nude, covering herself only with sporting equipment, is at the center of the ad’s controversy. When discussing the ad, Sweeney stated that “the campaign was about embracing a fun idea. The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports.” Sweeney, who recently joined the company as an equity partner and strategic holder seems to benefit from its controversy. She has faced controversies equally or more discussed by the pop culture sphere, including an advertisement from the company American Eagle in the summer of 2025, which led to accusations of Sweeney being a eugenicist. 

The discourse surrounding Sweeney’s most recent foray into cultural relevancy is already tired. The ad came out almost a month ago. Whether or not she faces any sort of punishment in Hollywood from those who disagree with her actions is irrelevant to the fact that this ad has been discussed extensively. Novig, which was founded in 2021, experienced a surge in popularity following the ad’s release. The intended audience, notably men, who would use a platform such as Novig, responded to the ad the way they were supposed to, with sports-driven lust. The female athletes who Sweeney could be accused of parodying, didn’t.

In a historically and habitually misogynistic world, female athletes have of course taken their fair share of sexist abuse. Often their uniforms are designed with the intention of making them seem attractive rather than helping their performance. In fact, some athletes have paid fines rather than wear their uniforms. In 2018, the Norwegian women’s handball team faced fines of $175 per player after they refused to wear the uniform’s official bikini bottoms, opting instead to wear more practical shorts. One of the new biggest sexual abuse scandals in professional sports ended with Larry Nassar being sentenced to over 60 years in prison after being found guilty of molesting female gymnasts. Nassar worked with gymnasts of all ages and skill levels, including Olympic athletes Simone Biles and Aly Raisman, both of whom testified against him. In 1973, former professional tennis player Bobby Riggs challenged Billie Jean King to a match against him so he could prove that a man would always be better than a woman, even when she was the top ranked female tennis player in the world. King defeated Riggs — but she never should have needed to prove her value in the first place. 

Women in professional sports were not the targeted audience of Sweeney and Novig’s ad. But they will be the ones suffering from it while the latter profit. Treating the idea of women in sports as a sex toy for men makes the struggle for female athletes to be taken seriously that much harder. 

In response to the ad, professional female athletes have spoken out. There needs to be a focus on “untangling beauty standards from professional sports.” Sophie Fella, a rugby player, also stated that this mix of the two was “disrespectful to every female athlete in the world.” Gracie Kramer, an American gymnast, called the ad “infuriating,” and Amy Hunt, a British Sprinter stated that she was “what women in sports looked like” after finishing an event at the Ultimate Athletics Championship in Budapest. 

Sydney Sweeney’s ad for Novig is not reflective of female athleticism and hurts the athletes who have suffered under sexist standards. Female athletes will continue to persevere, prioritizing their careers above unfair beauty standards reinforced by companies like Novig to cater to men who will never feel the consequences of Sweeney’s ad. Hopefully, the sexualization female athletes face will continue to diminish as casual misogyny and the objectification of women’s bodies falls further out of style, but Sweeney’s ad only encourages sexism against other female athletes.