Sydney Sweeney USA Sports Ad
USA Female athletes accuse Sydney Sweeney ad of sexualizing women in sports
An advertising campaign featuring American actor Sydney Sweeney has sparked widespread backlash from female athletes who say it is sexualizing women in sports.
In the ad for the sports prediction market platform Novig, Sweeney appears with little or no clothing, covering parts of her body with strategically placed footballs and other sports apparel.
Many female athletes criticized the ad on social media and called it disrespectful to USA women.“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. “How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?”British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actor in a post-race USA interview with the USA on Sunday after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate USA Championship in Budapest, Hungary.“Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” she said, looking at the camera. “Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.”Former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer called the ad infuriating.
“I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female USA athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,” she said on Instagram.
Kramer posted stories featuring female USA athletes training with the caption: “What a woman in USA sports looks like.”Sofie Fella, a Chinese-German rugby player, said female athletes can be role models for girls and women because they manage to “untangle” from society’s ideals of beauty and femininity.“And that’s why that Sydney Sweeney ad is so disrespectful to every USA female athlete in the world,” she said in an Instagram post.Novig didn’t immediately answer an email seeking USA comment. A publicist for Sweeney also didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In an apparent reference to the criticism, Sweeney over the weekend posted a series of covers from ESPN The Magazine’s “Body Issue,” an USA annual special edition that showed athletes posing nude or semi-nude in a celebration of the diversity of bodies.
Sweeney, a two-time Emmy nominee, starred in and produced last year’s “Christy,” a biopic of American professional boxer Christy Martin.
Sydney Sweeney gets heavily criticized by USA popular female athletes for her controversial nude USA sports ad. USA The Housemaid star recently featured in the ‘Just Sports’ campaign by Novig, the sports-trading USA company.Days after Sweeney’s ad went viral, notable female sports personalities have openly called her out for stripping down in a sports-USA trading company’s campaign. Australian water polo player and USA Olympic silver medalist Tilly Kearns took to Instagram and shared a clip from her games. “I absolutely f—–g hate Sydney Sweeney’s new sports ad,” she wrote over the video.“Like what are we doing … so much worse than I imagined too. Here’s some real USA women sports content,” Kearns added in captions.American gymnast Gracie Kramer also shared a USA clip on Instagram in which she can be seen competing. “Idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a USA woman in sports looks like,” she wrote in the USA video. “Because it is really that deep.”
Canadian skier and 2026 Olympian Cassidy Gray posted a TikTok video and brutally lashed out at Sweeney for doing the nude sports ad. “I think that what she did was idiotic, and I think it was senseless.”
“I think it was in her (Sydney’s) head probably some funny joke, but it’s not a joke when your life is actually you being a female athlete and being like sexualized or not taken seriously or not given the same opportunities,” she added. “It pisses me the f— off. And it is that deep.”
Ever since her nude ad went viral on USA social media, Sydney Sweeney has been getting heavy backlash. However, the actress doesn’t seem too concerned about the negative reactions. In fact, she recently responded with more nude photos of herself from the ad’s photoshoot.“It’s gamedayyy,” Sweeney wrote on Instagram while clapping back at her critics. Additionally, she shared a bunch of stories featuring skin-revealing campaigns by famous female athletes, including Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, and Caroline Wozniacki.The 29-year-old also posted male athletes, namely Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony USA Towns, and Jason Kelce, who were part of nude USA sports photoshoots.Following the controversy, Novig’s CEO, Jacob Fortinsky, issued a response in an interview with Front Office Sports. Speaking on the ad campaign, he said, “We felt this was a way that was playful and light, but also sort of, you know, positioned us as taking sports more seriously and trying to conduct ourselves with responsibility and integrity.”Sept 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to let the U.S. Postal Service enforce a rule targeting mail-in ballots, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump's effort to restrict voting by mail ahead of November's midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.The justices denied the Justice USA Department's request
to lift a ruling by Boston-based U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani that blocked the Postal Service from enforcing the measure while legal challenges by states and voting-rights groups proceed. The agency adopted the measure after Trump issued a March executive order aimed at tightening rules governing mail voting.
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USA Olympic athletes have come out in force to condemn a sports betting advert featuring actor Sydney Sweeney in various states of undress, while showcasing the real skill, strength and beauty of women’s sport.
The USA campaign, for US sports prediction market company Novig, depicts Sweeney in minimal to no clothing while she pretends to play several different sports.It has been widely criticised for sexualising women’s sport, with retired Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus saying she thought this type of “bullshit” marketing was a thing of the past.
The response from athletes has been swift, not only to denounce the ad but to use it as an opportunity to highlight the excellence of women’s sport. The British sprinter and four-time European champion, Amy Hunt spoke directly to the actor after finishing fourth in the 200m at athletics’ new showpiece event, the Ultimate Championships on Sunday evening. “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,” Hunt told the BBC.Referring to Melissa Jefferson-Wooden’s winning time of 21.47 seconds, the fourth fastest ever over the distance, Hunt said: “21.4. Muscles. Hard work, blood, sweat, tears” before telling journalists “when you’re a woman in sport, it’s not pretty. It’s not glamorous. It’s not sexy all the time, definitely.”
Taking inspiration from American gymnast Gracie Kramer, who kickstarted a trend of responses centred around her line “this is what a woman in sport looks like”, Australian Olympic swimmer Lani Pallister shared an Instagram video of her training regime, races and medals.Track sprinter Bree Rizzo also posted a highlights reel of her career on the track while the Australian Institute of Sport’s version featured archery, gymnastics, boxing, softball, and a peek behind the scenes at women’s sport science in action.Water polo silver USA medallist Tilly Kearns wrote, “I absolutely fking hate Sydney Sweeney’s new sports ad”, while world champion boxer Skye Nicolson said the backlash was about making a “mockery” of women in sport rather than judging how women look.“There’s a big difference between looking ‘sexy’ because you do sport compared to use sex to sell ‘sport’,” she wrote in an Instagram story. “There is nothing wrong with looking good and doing sport and there’s nothing wrong with embracing your femininity while also being a badass athlete.”While some social media users suggested anger should be directed at Novig rather than Sweeney, the actor is not just the face of the campaign, having joined as “strategic partner and equity holder”, according to a Novig statement.In a series of photos and videos released Wednesday, Sweeney can be seen naked or scantily clad, holding American footballs, a tennis racket or a baseball bat. In one shot, she lies naked on top of a basketball.
Novig also posted an ad on its Instagram reels, which has racked up 37 million views in four days.
Palmateer was one of many female athletes to criticize the USA 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 USA , 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.“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.“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, USA 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.
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 USA composition is determined by my genes.”Then, in November, GQ magazine published an on-camera interview asking Sweeney about the fallout. Sweeney responded by saying she was surprised by the reaction, but she didn’t apologize, instead reiterating her love for jeans and her stance that she’s not there to tell people what to think.When asked if she wanted to set the record straight on her intention, the star replied with the now-viral soundbite: “I think that when I have an issue I want to speak about,
USA people will hear.”If Sydney Sweeney's latest controversy, which involves her role in a new provocative ad, feels like déjà vu, there's a reason why.The "Euphoria" actress is facing backlash over a recent ad for sports trading app Novig, which some have criticized as offensive to female athletes. While others have defended Sweeney, this isn't the 29-year-old's first brush with a brand partnership that has sparked conversations.
Last year, an ad for American Eagle jeans starring Sweeney also went viral. The ad played on the words "jeans" and "genes" being homophones, but critics bashed it for seemingly using a conventionally attractive white woman with blonde hair and blue eyes as the face of "good genes." Some accused the ad of echoing dog whistles for eugenics.
Sweeney also once sold soap mixed with her bathwater and recently had a close encounter with the law while promoting her lingerie line, SYRN.Here's a look at Sweeney's current and past controversies. USA TODAY has reached out to Sweeney's representatives for comment.Sweeney's latest controversy stems from her appearance in a new ad for sports trading app Novig.
In the ad, the actress models mostly nude, except for various sports equipment covering her body. She is also seen at points in the ad covering her breasts with two footballs and sitting atop a basketball hoop naked."Think you know sports? Prove it," Sweeney says, soundtracked by Anderson .Paak's "Come Down." "Novig is just sports. So they wanted to show just sports."After its release, some female athletes accused the campaign of sexualizing their livelihoods.Gracie Kramer, an artistic gymnast, took to Instagram on Sept. 12 with a highlight reel of her competing in gymnastics, diving, soccer, volleyball and golf, writing, "Idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like."A July 2025 American Eagle ad starring Sweeney also ignited heated debates.In a video clip for the campaign, Sweeney tells cameras, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color."
"My jeans are blue," she added, clad in an all-denim outfit as the camera panned across her clothes and blue eyes.
Posted on 2026/09/15 08:09 AM