Australian athletes hit back at a hypersexualized sports-prediction ad campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney, criticizing the campaign for undermining women in sports. The Novig advertisements sparked widespread backlash across social media following their release, drawing public rebuttals from prominent female competitors in swimming, surfing, and boxing.
A promotional campaign for the U.S. sports-prediction market Novig has ignited a fierce backlash from elite female athletes who argue the marketing strategy exploits female sexuality rather than celebrating athletic achievement. 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.
Competitors quickly voiced their frustration over the hypersexualization of sports imagery.
Elite Athletes Condemn the Novig Campaign
Professional competitors took to digital platforms to reject the premise of the advertisements. The campaign is “very damaging” for female athletes and young girls looking to get into sport, Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer told CNN in an interview Monday.
Palmateer was one of many female athletes to criticize the campaign, describing absolute utter disbelief, incredibly disappointing, like, how far you can put women's sports backwards in the space of a 42-second commercial.
She added 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, noting, 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,
according to CNN affiliate 9News. Titmus wrote that she cannot describe how infuriated she feels when she watches the ad.
“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.”
Ariarne Titmus, Australian swimmer
Swimmers and Boxers Respond With Training Footage
Other competitors responded by redirecting attention toward actual athletic training. 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 with the caption, Giving the ad campaign exactly what they wanted, but honestly these companies need to do better 🙄 Stop sexualising women in #sport.
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. In one ad she says, Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,
and in another claims that my body's composition is determined by my genes.
Sweeney didn’t initially address the uproar caused by the campaign, causing people to draw their own conclusions on how she felt about the ad.
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, people will hear.
CNN has contacted Sweeney’s representatives and Novig for comment.
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