Sydney Sweeney has lost more than 200,000 Instagram followers after appearing nude in a controversial advertisement for a sports-betting app.
Her Instagram following initially climbed by around 50,000 in the three days after the ad was released, before the surge abruptly reversed.
On Sunday alone, 136,848 users unfollowed Sweeney, followed by another 68,000 on Monday, according to social-media analytics firm Social Blade.
However, the exodus is still a fraction of her enormous following. Sweeney has more than 25 million Instagram followers, meaning the combined losses amount to less than one percent of her audience.
The actress is seeing a wave of furious backlash after her 60-second video ad for Novig, a sports betting platform.
The clip shows Sweeney, 29, largely naked as basketballs, footballs, tennis rackets and other sporting equipment cover parts of her body. At one point, she repeatedly drawls “sports” before declaring: “No betting on wars or deaths and no politics. Just you, your takes, and sports.”
The campaign has generated more than a million likes, but it has also provoked intense backlash.
Olympic athletes have been among the most vocal critics. Four-time gold medal swimmer Ariarne Titmus wrote: “I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this. … How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?”
Other athletes, including gymnast Gracie Kramer, sprinter Bree Rizzo, boxer Skye Nicolson, runner Mary McCarthy and Olympic swimmer Lani Pallister, shared their own versions of what being a woman in sports looks like, sharing footage of training, competition and medal-winning performances.
Sweeney appeared to answer the criticism on Sunday by posting nude photographs of prominent athletes including Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki, Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jason Kelce.
The images came from ESPN Magazine’s now-defunct Body Issue, which featured athletes posing nude between 2009 and 2019. She placed the photographs alongside images from her own Novig campaign.
But critics have argued the comparison misses a key distinction: the ESPN photographs celebrated athletes, while Sweeney’s campaign is advertising a commercial prediction platform.
“Her ad is to promote gambling, not athleticism,” wrote Australia’s Cheek Media.
Sweeney is also more than a paid face of Novig, having joined the company as a strategic partner and equity holder.
Sweeney has defended the campaign as deliberately playful.
“The campaign was about embracing a fun idea,” she said in a statement. “The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor and a playful edge.”
Sweeney has been outspoken in the past about a “double standard” around nudity.
“There are hour-long compilations of world-famous male actors with nude scenes who win Oscars and get praised for that work,” she said in an interview with Cosmopolitan in 2022. “But the moment a woman does it, it degrades them. They’re not actresses. They just take off their tops so they can get a role. There’s such a double standard and I really hope I can have a little part in changing that.”
“A woman’s body is beyond empowering and beautiful and sexy and all the things,” she told the London Times in 2025. “And I think that one day I will be able to have control of the narrative of my body. I’ll take the power.”
