Novig's nude Sydney Sweeney ad draws backlash from women athletes
A Novig sports prediction market advertisement featuring a nearly nude Sydney Sweeney has drawn backlash from professional women athletes. The criticism centers on the ad's sexualization of women in sports. The campaign, which includes Sweeney holding an equity stake in the platform, arrives amid a heated race among prediction market operators to deploy celebrity marketing during football season. The sources do not provide Novig's response or details on the campaign's scope.
The backlash turns Novig's headline-grabbing creative into a brand-safety problem that could restrict where the ad runs and who appears beside it. Athlete critics have framed the spot as harmful to women in sports, a line that carries weight with network and publisher brand-safety teams. Novig must now either defend the creative to preserve its Times Square placement and media buys, or pull it and waste production spend.
Sweeney's equity stake ties her directly to Novig's outcome, so both share the downside if partners retreat. For a platform banking on celebrity differentiation from Polymarket and Kalshi, the controversy tests whether attention converts to accounts or to advertiser wariness. The first prediction market to watch a celebrity deal collapse under public pressure will set the risk premium every rival prices into its next star contract.
The Novig controversy joins the running cluster of prediction market celebrity ad pushes — Novig's Sweeney equity deal, Polymarket's LeBron James campaign, and Kalshi's Marshawn Lynch enlistment — testing whether star power converts to funded accounts or calcifies into brand risk.