Sydney Sweeney’s newest brand deal has stirred up exactly the kind of reaction her past campaigns have become known for, and her way of answering it followed a familiar script too.
The actress recently signed on with Novig, a sports prediction market that lets users wager on athletic outcomes, and her role goes well beyond a paycheck for smiling at a camera. Sweeney is an equity partner in the company, giving her a financial interest in how well the platform performs, not just a fee for lending her face to it.
The campaign images, which show her covered only by pieces of sports equipment like footballs and soccer balls, spread quickly online and were cropped or blurred by outlets that picked up the story.
sydney sweeney reacting to her giant naked ad in times square 😂 pic.twitter.com/EZidXvBOXA
— Mikasa (@mikasa_90s) September 13, 2026
Sweeney has framed her involvement as something closer to a partnership than a typical endorsement deal.
“I’ve been a part of the creative conversations from the very beginning. I built an amazing relationship with everyone involved, and I was really excited to get to set,” she said. She added, “I don’t like to just put my face on something. I really want to be able to get into the weeds of it with an amazing team.”
That explanation did little to quiet the response online, so Sweeney turned to her Instagram Stories, sharing a set of images from ESPN’s Body Issue, an annual feature that has photographed professional athletes in the nude over the years.
Sydney Sweeney justifies her poor marketing by showcasing other women who posed naked for sports ads
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Among the names included was Ronda Rousey, alongside other sport stars who have appeared in the series, seemingly offered as evidence that she was being unfairly singled out for choices other public figures have made without facing the same level of criticism.
The comparison did not land the way she may have hoped. The Body Issue has built its identity around showing what elite training does to a body, pairing its images with interviews about the sacrifices and physical toll behind each athlete’s career. It has never been sold as a vehicle for a product, let alone one built around placing bets on the very sports these athletes compete in.
Critics pointed out that pairing herself with that legacy sidesteps the actual complaint, which centers on using her image to promote a gambling platform rather than the mere fact that she chose to pose without clothing.
This is not the first time Sweeney has faced this kind of scrutiny, nor the first time she has responded to it in a way that avoids directly engaging with the content. Her 2024 campaign for American Eagle drew criticism for wordplay around “genes” that many read as carrying uncomfortable undertones.
Asked about the response at the time, she offered little more than, “I think that when I have an issue that I want to speak about, people will hear,” before later saying she didn’t “support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign.”
The Novig rollout also arrives while her lingerie label, Siren, is reportedly having a difficult stretch, with the brand’s marketing built almost entirely around Sweeney herself despite her insistence that the line is about women owning their image rather than being designed to appeal to men.
A review of the brand noted that “the branding feels exclusionary, and the inconsistency between the brand’s intention and execution is a threat to its viability,” pointing out that “the brand remains centered on one figure, Sydney Sweeney.”
