Sydney Sweeney has a message for her haters.
The actress is seeing a wave of furious backlash after her 60-second ad for Novig, a sports betting platform. In the viral clip and its accompanying images, 29-year-old Sweeney is posing nude and is just about covered with basketballs, footballs, tennis rackets and various sports equipment.
In the clip, she repeatedly drawls the word “sports,” and says, “No betting on wars or deaths and no politics. Just you, your takes, and sports.”
Sports organizations and several high-profile female athletes have slammed Sweeney and the concept behind the gambling platform’s campaign. The fundamental issue, they say, is the sexualization of women in sports and the minimization of what actually goes behind female success in the field.
Athletes like gymnast Gracie Kramer, track sprinter Bree Rizzo, championship boxer Skye Nicolson, runner Mary McCarthy, and Olympic swimmer Lani Pallister shared their own versions of what being a woman in sports looks like, with clips of extensive training sessions, global competitions, and medal ceremonies.
Sweeney has not ignored the criticism.
The Euphoria star has now shared a series of nude images of major sports stars on her Instagram account, where she has over 25 million followers. The images were pulled from ESPN Magazine’s now-defunct Body Issue series. Since 2009, the magazine has featured some of the world’s most famous athletes posing naked.
Sweeney posted nude photos of Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki, Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Jason Kelce. She sandwiched these images, ranging from 2009 to 2019, in between images of her own naked campaign.
Sweeney, who joined Novig as strategic partner and equity holder, has insisted her campaign is all about sports. “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.”
The actress, no stranger to posing nude, told Complex that “being able to be a part of watching this company grow and not just be the face of it” is very important to her. She also explained that she grew up loving and participating in multiple sports, including soccer, skiing, and MMA.
In her Instagram stories, Sweeney’s intention was clear, showcasing winning athletes who have shown their bodies, either fully or partially.
But her wordless response to critics may not have had the intended effect. In turn, people are pointing out that ESPN’s nude or partly nude images are a celebration, not an advert for prediction markets; that the people posing are athletes, not promoters of a product.
“Her ad is to promote gambling, not athleticism,” wrote Australia’s Cheek Media.
Not All Clubs, a media company targeting inequality in sport, pointed out that Sweeney’s stake in the company shows that she “stands to financially benefit from a campaign that uses a woman’s sexualized body to sell gambling through sport, while playing directly into the male gaze.”
ESPN’s editors have described the Bodies issues as a “one-of-a-kind celebration of the athletic form,” “diversity of bodies,” “powerful, provocative, a little bit sexy, and not inappropriate.” The series was lauded at the time. Their cover issue featuring Williams, for example, was praised by TIME Magazine, which wrote in 2012 that “the nude image suggested a newfound confidence and hit home the message that beauty has no size limit.”
Since her rise to fame, Sweeney has been a polarizing figure, and her body has become a political topic that resurfaces every few months. She has made headlines for everything from her sexuality to controversial ads and products to her political beliefs.
While she has remained evasive about the latter, the Handmaid actress has been outspoken spoken about a “double standard” around nudity in particular.
“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.”
