Jen Psaki, host of MS NOW, has sharply criticized Sydney Sweeney’s recently viral Novig commercial, in which the actress appears nearly nude with sports equipment covering her body. Psaki argued that the campaign leans on “misogynistic sexualization” long associated with women’s sport, and stressed that her concern is with the ad’s message and commercial framing rather than Sweeney’s personal choices.

Psaki underlined that her critique does not target Sweeney’s appearance. “She looks great, good for her,” Psaki said. “But the problem is the message an ad like this sends about women in sports.”

A Flashpoint in a Decades-Long Fight Over How Women in Sport Are Shown

Psaki framed the Novig spot as part of a wider, long-running pattern in women’s sport, where female athletes have had to contest persistent focus on their bodies rather than their performances.

“For decades, as anyone who follows women’s sports knows, female athletes have been fighting this relentless and usually completely misogynistic sexualization of women’s sports. This has been an ongoing issue forever, especially at the pro and college level,” she said.

That tension sits alongside a governance framework in which competition organizers and federations increasingly reference gender equity and safeguarding in their rules. Global bodies such as the International Olympic Committee now include gender representation and non-discrimination in their ethical and human-rights guidance, even as commercial partners retain wide latitude in how they market sport and betting products.

What the Novig Campaign Shows – and Why Athletes Are Angry

Novig’s first national ad campaign places Sweeney at the center of a series of stylized sports tableaux. The spot, which began airing on September 9, shows the actress nude while covering her body with strategically positioned sporting equipment. In different shots, she:

• covers her breasts with two footballs
• spins a basketball atop a hoop
• plays tennis in her underwear
• uses a golf club
• lies down on a pool table

A clip of the ad posted by Novig to Instagram Reels earned 37 million views in just four days, underscoring how quickly a sports-betting promotion can enter the broader cultural conversation.

Sweeney is not just a face for the brand. She has become a strategic partner and equity holder in Novig. She has said the campaign “was about embracing a fun idea.” The company markets itself as a platform for sports-prediction markets where users trade game outcomes with each other rather than betting against a traditional bookmaker, a model that places it inside the crowded and heavily regulated sports wagering ecosystem.

Athletes Say the Ad Undercuts Hard-Won Progress

Psaki’s remarks arrived after a wave of criticism from high-profile athletes who felt the commercial cuts against the visibility and credibility they have worked to build for women’s sport.

Among the most vocal was Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, who wrote on Instagram that the ad feels like “a kick in the face to every woman that has dedicated her entire life to sport.” British sprinter Amy Hunt directly addressed Sweeney during a race, stressing that real women in sport are muscular and hard-working. Australian surfer Felicity Palmateer told CNN that the campaign is particularly damaging for young girls entering the sporting system and forming their first impressions of what a sportswoman is meant to look like.

Psaki publicly supported those athletes, aligning her critique with their concern that, at a time when women’s events are drawing record crowds and broadcast slots, a high-profile betting campaign still defaults to a near-nude, non-athlete body as its primary visual reference point.

The timing has further inflamed reaction among college athletes, who have highlighted that women’s teams in many programs continue to face resource cuts in areas such as facilities, staffing, and travel, even as betting operators invest heavily to reach sports fans.

Sweeney’s Social Media Response and the Elite Athletes She Highlighted

As debate intensified, Sweeney appeared to respond on Instagram Stories by sharing a sequence of images featuring nude athletes, including Serena Williams and Megan Rapinoe. Those posts drew a contrast between long-standing photographic projects that center active, elite competitors and a betting commercial fronted by a non-athlete, even as viewers continued to disagree over whether the Novig campaign belongs in the same conversation.

Inside Novig’s Strategy and the Sports-Betting Market It Wants to Enter

Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky has said the company did not set out to make a statement about female athletes. “We never intended to portray female sports,” he stated, adding that Sweeney drove the visual direction of the campaign.

Fortinsky has described the ad buy as a deliberate attempt to “put the company on the map” and push Novig into the national sports conversation. Rather than spreading its budget across a wide range of smaller placements against rivals, Novig devoted most of its marketing spend to this single, high-impact campaign, entering a marketplace where FanDuel and DraftKings together hold roughly three-quarters of the regulated U.S. sports-betting share.

That commercial context matters in sport. Legal wagering is now woven into the broadcast experience in many competitions, yet regulators and rights holders face rising scrutiny over how gambling is promoted, who is targeted, and which images are used. In jurisdictions such as the United States, where state-level rules and national bodies like the NCAA rulebook on sports wagering intersect with pro-league guidelines, campaigns that lean on sexualized imagery can quickly become litmus tests for how the industry balances growth with responsibility.

Divided Public Reaction and the Question of Who the Ad Represents

Not all reaction has supported Psaki and the athletes criticizing the ad. Some online commentators have argued that the commercial is not a depiction of a female athlete at all but a straightforward attempt to attract gamblers, many of whom are men, through a provocative, celebrity-led campaign.

Some conservative voices have accused Psaki and other critics of missing the point entirely, pointing to the ad’s wordplay around whether one “has the balls” to use the platform and arguing that its focus is on gambling bravado rather than women’s sport.

That split highlights a core tension: in an era when women’s sports competitions are increasingly central to the global calendar and athletes are driving their own commercial narratives, a highly visible betting ad that returns to a familiar sexualized framing inevitably shapes how fans – especially new and younger ones – encounter women’s bodies alongside sporting content.

A Wider Advertising Pattern Around a Fast-Rising Star

The Novig controversy arrives shortly after another high-profile campaign for Sweeney, her “great genes/jeans” spot with American Eagle. Taken together, the back-to-back campaigns demonstrate how a rapidly rising entertainment figure has become a go-to presence for brands that want to connect with young sports and lifestyle audiences – and how each creative decision can reverberate inside elite sport, from Olympic pools to college tracks.

For athletes like Titmus, Hunt, and Palmateer, the reaction to the Novig ad is less about policing Sweeney’s choices and more about what kinds of images dominate when betting companies purchase some of the most valuable inventory in sport. For Psaki, the campaign has become a reference point in a broader debate over whether the commercial partners now embedded in the sports ecosystem are prepared to align their messaging with the values that federations and athletes say they are trying to promote.

This controversy came shortly after Sweeney’s “great genes/jeans” ad campaign for American Eagle.

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