“Sports.” This is the word repeated nine times by actress Sydney Sweeney in a recent advertisement for the sports predication market app Novig. However, though the video promises it is about “just sports,” it has quickly accrued backlash from female athletes across the world for its imagery surrounding women’s bodies and their sports. That’s because this is no typical advertisement, but a semi-pornographic, exploitative way of designing media. Sweeney, nude except for a few well-placed pieces of athletic equipment, is sold alongside whatever else Novig offers, as she gestures to footballs, hockey sticks and her own body, saying, “You can trade this.” There is no distinction between object and person, but don’t worry, because Sweeney assures you that there is “no betting on death or wars, and no politics” when it comes to this presentation.
Of course, the entire ad is a performance rife with politics and dishonesty. Sweeney sits topless and bottomless on top of a basketball hoop, saying that Novig wanted to show “just sports,” but that is not what is on display. Basketballs and tennis rackets are just props to the main attraction: the sexualization of women. Sweeney herself acknowledges the truth when she says, lying halfway-naked on a billiards table, “You can’t trade this. I just look good here.” The only purpose of that shot was exhibition, an attempt to draw a voyeuristic gaze towards the female body — without a single justification for it, because Novig doesn’t even deal in billiards.
Much of the criticism of the Novig ad has centered on Sweeney herself, with Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus demanding, “What is this teaching young men and women of today? Sydney Sweeney, do better.” Yet, another question could be why are advertisements, social media and the players behind them functioning as teachers? Why are we all so quick to blame an actress performing an assigned part instead of algorithms that bombard us with “rage-bait”? More than anything, the Novig ad embodies that phrase. It is online content specifically created to spread hate and outrage to increase views.
Guess what? It’s working. Over 50 million people have watched Sweeney ask “Think you know sports? Prove it.” Even the opening lines of the Novig ad egg on the audience, challenging them to react. This sort of marketing ploy profits off of a positive feedback loop. Most people would never have known the advertisement or the company existed without enraged viewers taking to social media. Without millions of posts about it, the Novig ad would have sunk into obscurity. An unfortunate truth is that heart-warming news goes nowhere on platforms like Instagram or Twitter, whereas hate and negativity spreads fastest. Thus, if a company wants to reach the greatest number of people possible, the smartest choice would be to make an ad so atrocious that we all are forced to encounter it.
So, when Titmus wondered what the Sweeney-Novig ad is teaching young men and women, the answer is that anger sells. We are all eager to express disgust toward Sweeney’s ad, but how many of us celebrated the WNBA championship? The Novig ad garnered 50 million views in a few short days, but the 2025 WNBA playoffs averaged only 1.2 million viewers a game — and even that was a record.
Titmus makes a strange assumption, presupposing that we accept social media and online consumption as educators. It is this presupposition which dwarfs the Sweeney commercial in terms of danger and which prompted me to hate on the ad and not the person. Spending excessive amounts of time online has led to us accepting what is on a screen as reality. We see Instagram reels featuring posh, skinny women wearing heavy makeup and believe that that is the ideal image of womanhood. We ingest misogynistic films and begin to think that that is the correct way to behave. We watch the Sweeney-Novig ad and become enraged because we know that, somewhere out there, there is a young person whose entire worldview consists of what they’ve seen online. Yet, we forget that we are the ones who are putting the ad into the foreground. Every comment, every share, every dislike adds fuel to the fire, and it will keep burning until we put down our phones, turn off the television and go engage in the real world with real women instead of with the performance.
‘Hater Friday’ runs on Fridays and centers around critiquing media or culture.
Jane Locke is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a staff writer for the Arts & Culture department and can be reached at jlocke@cornellsun.com.
