A viral ad campaign for a sports prediction market featuring a nearly nude Sydney Sweeney drew backlash from professional women athletes and highlighted an unfolding regulatory battle between the Trump administration and states.
The “Euphoria” actor, who courted controversy last year over an American Eagle ad campaign, wears “just sports” in the new ad for Novig, a sports-only prediction market. She is shown covering parts of her body with sporting equipment such as footballs and basketball hoops.
“No betting on wars, or deaths and no politics,” Sweeney says in the ad. “Just you, your takes and sports.”
Timed to align with the start of the 2026 NFL season, the campaign sparked outrage from professional female athletes who argue its “hypersexualized” nature reinforces sexist stereotypes. Some raised concerns over the “damaging” message it sends to young women athletes.
“I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,” Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Australian Olympic gold medalist, wrote in a statement posted to her Instagram account. “How do we live in a world where monetising a women’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?” the retired swimmer wrote.
Sweeney’s ad has garnered more than 42 million views since it was posted to Novig’s Instagram page last week. Social media users, from Olympians to fitness influencers, have responded with a cascade of videos of themselves pushing their athletic abilities and highlighting major accomplishments in women’s sports.
“I absolutely hate Sydney Sweeney’s new ‘sports’ ad,” Mia Vallee, an NCAA springboard diver for the University of Miami, wrote over a video clip of her executing a complicated dive routine. “Media focuses on how we look not what we can do.”
Novig bills itself as sports trading only, unlike prediction market giants Polymarket and Kalshi, which have drawn scrutiny from lawmakers for offering contracts on the outcomes of events such as the Iran war and the midterm elections, raising the risk of insider trading and intentional outcome manipulation.
Sweeney’s ad campaign comes as the startup seeks to establish itself as a sports betting destination after it won approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the federal agency that regulates prediction markets, to operate in the U.S. in June.
Novig’s launch coincides with a nationwide battle between states and the Trump administration over who has the power to police prediction markets. At the heart of that fight is the question of whether federally regulated prediction market platforms should be forced to obey the gambling laws of the states they operate in.
States have made the case that the platform’s sports-related event contracts amount to illegal betting that violates their gambling laws and siphons valuable tax revenue. But President Donald Trump has rejected that argument, and his CFTC has taken aggressive measures to cement prediction markets under federal control.
Novig hired a former Trump administration official who worked for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to help it navigate that legal landscape. Elie Mishory, Novig’s chief regulatory and legal affairs officer, oversaw DOGE’s efforts at the Securities and Exchange Commission shortly after Trump’s return to the White House in 2025.
The CFTC’s confrontational approach comes as the Trump family maintains financial ties to Kalshi and Polymarket. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., sits on the board of advisers for both Kalshi and Polymarket. Trump Jr. holds a large volume of shares in Kalshi and has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital. He has publicly denied that his ties to the prediction markets influence federal government operations.
Novig said it has plans to roll out more of Sweeney-centered ads as the NFL season continues.
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