Commercial Review: Novig’s “Just Sports” Campaign
There are commercials that make you think about the product, and then there are commercials that make you think about the person in the commercial. Sydney Sweeney’s new campaign for sports prediction platform Novig is very much the second kind.
The “Just Sports” campaign launched (watch at your own discretion) September 9 as Novig’s first national brand campaign, and it definitely got people talking. Sweeney appears in little to no clothing while sports equipment is strategically positioned throughout the commercial, and the word “sports” is repeated over and over again. Novig says the concept is supposed to communicate that unlike prediction markets that allow trading on everything from politics to current events, its platform is focused entirely on sports.
Technically, there are sports everywhere. But I watched the commercial, and I’m not convinced sports are actually what they’re selling.
First, What Exactly Is Novig?
Novig is a sports prediction market where users can trade on the outcomes of sporting events. The company is positioning itself against broader prediction platforms by emphasizing that it is focused on sports rather than politics, world events or other things people might wager predictions on.
That distinction is actually the entire premise behind the “Just Sports” campaign. The commercial repeatedly reinforces that Novig is about sports, while Sweeney poses with footballs, basketballs, hockey equipment, a tennis racket and other sporting props.
But here’s where the marketing gets interesting.
If the most memorable thing about your sports commercial is that the sporting equipment is being used as clothing, we may need to discuss the marketing strategy. lol
The Commercial Is About Sports. Kinda.
I’m not going to pretend I don’t understand what Novig is doing here. I understand it perfectly, and I think everyone else does too.
The target audience for sports prediction and gambling products tends to skew male, and Novig put one of the most talked-about female celebrities in the world in a provocative commercial designed to attract attention. The sports equipment gives the campaign its theme, but Sydney Sweeney’s sexuality gives it its hook.
That’s not an accident. It’s the strategy.
The ad even ends with Sweeney topless on a pool table after spending most of the commercial using sports equipment to cover herself. There are sports references everywhere, but very little about the commercial feels interested in the actual experience of sports.
It feels much more interested in getting a particular audience to stop scrolling. And on that front, I can’t exactly say it didn’t work.
On One Hand, This Marketing Worked
The campaign went viral almost immediately, generating millions of views and putting Novig into a national conversation that a relatively unknown prediction platform would have had a much harder time entering on its own. Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky has been remarkably open about that goal, telling Front Office Sports that partnering with Sweeney essentially forces the company into the national conversation.
That matters because Novig is competing in a category with companies that already have significantly more name recognition. If your problem is that people don’t know your company exists, putting Sydney Sweeney in an attention-grabbing commercial is certainly one way to fix that.
So I’m not going to sit here and tell you the marketing doesn’t work.
Sex gets attention.
Advertisers figured that out approximately five minutes after advertising was invented. The question I’m much more interested in is what happens after you get the attention.
Everyone Is Talking About Sydney Sweeney
This is where the campaign becomes a really interesting marketing case study.
A lot of the coverage surrounding the commercial isn’t actually about Novig’s product. It’s about Sydney Sweeney, what she’s wearing, what she’s not wearing, whether the commercial is offensive and the backlash surrounding it.
That distinction matters.
If millions of people watch your commercial but leave thinking primarily about the celebrity rather than the company, you have to ask what kind of awareness you actually created. There’s obviously still value in getting the Novig name into headlines, especially for a newer company, but attention and product interest aren’t automatically the same thing.
Novig may be completely comfortable with that tradeoff. In fact, based on Fortinsky’s comments about wanting Sweeney to put the company into the national discourse, the enormous conversation surrounding her may be exactly what the company wanted.
But it’s still worth asking whether people are becoming interested in Novig or simply becoming interested in the Novig commercial.
Those are two different outcomes.
Sydney Sweeney Isn’t Just the Spokesperson
There’s another detail that makes this campaign more interesting than a traditional celebrity endorsement.
Sweeney is a strategic partner and equity holder in Novig. According to Front Office Sports, she actually approached the company about working together, and Novig’s own announcement identifies her as both a strategic partner and an equity holder.
That means she isn’t simply an actress who showed up, filmed the commercial and collected an endorsement check. She has a financial interest in the company’s success.
I actually find that part fascinating because we’ve been talking so much lately about creators and public figures moving beyond traditional sponsorships into ownership. Instead of only lending her image to Novig, Sweeney potentially benefits from helping the company itself become more valuable.
It also means this campaign is tied much more closely to her than a typical celebrity ad. She’s not just the face of the controversy. She’s one of the people with something to gain if all this attention turns into growth.
But There’s a Difference Between Provocative and Relevant
This is where my opinion of the campaign gets a lot less enthusiastic.
I think the commercial is crass.
Not because Sydney Sweeney isn’t allowed to be sexy. She’s an adult, she participated in the campaign willingly and she has every right to present herself however she wants.
My issue is with what the brand is using sexuality to accomplish.
Novig is trying to attract people to a platform where they can put money behind predictions about sports. Instead of making sports fandom, competition, knowledge or the fun of making predictions the compelling part of the commercial, it uses Sweeney’s body as the primary attention mechanism.
It’s essentially combining three things the company assumes its target customer likes: sports, gambling and attractive women. I’m not sure we’re breaking any new creative ground here.
And while it may be effective at grabbing attention, I don’t particularly respect the strategy. It feels less like convincing someone that Novig has an interesting product and more like using sex to pull a likely male customer toward it.
That doesn’t necessarily make the advertising ineffective. It does make me question whether the attention is doing much more than getting people to look.
Female Athletes Are Asking a Different Question
The campaign has also sparked significant backlash from female athletes around the world, and I think their criticism is worth including in this conversation.
Four-time Olympic gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, British sprinter Amy Hunt, former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer and other athletes have criticized the campaign for sexualizing women in a sports context. Several female athletes responded by sharing their own training and competition footage to show what women in sports actually look like.
Their argument isn’t simply that a woman appeared nude.
The criticism is that women have spent decades fighting to have their athleticism, strength and accomplishments taken seriously, while this campaign uses a woman’s body as a tool to sell a sports-related gambling product. Boxer Skye Nicolson made a particularly important distinction in her response, arguing that there’s a difference between women in sports embracing sexuality and using sex to sell sports.
That’s an important distinction. And it brings us right back to the marketing strategy.
Who Is This Commercial Actually For?
When I watch the commercial through a marketing lens, this is the question I keep coming back to.
It doesn’t feel like a celebration of sports or women in sports. It feels like a commercial built very intentionally around what Novig believes will attract its desired customer. That may be smart audience targeting. It can also feel reductive. Both things can be true at the same time.
You can look at a campaign and acknowledge that it is probably effective at getting the attention of a particular audience while also thinking the method used to get there is crass. Marketing doesn’t have to be unsuccessful for us to question whether it was good.
That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reviewing commercials in the first place. The most interesting marketing isn’t always clearly brilliant or clearly terrible. Sometimes it works, and you still don’t like why it works.
Attention Is Not the Same Thing as Effective Marketing
This is the part small business owners and creators should actually take from the Novig campaign. We’re all obsessed with attention online. Views. Reach. Likes. Shares. Comments. Viral videos. And when something suddenly gets 500,000 views, it’s very easy to declare victory.
But what did people remember?
Imagine a dental office posts a ridiculous Reel that gets two million views because one of the hygienists does something completely unrelated to dentistry. Everyone laughs, shares it with their friends and moves on.
Did two million people learn why they should choose that dentist? Probably not. That doesn’t mean the Reel was useless. Maybe it increased awareness, brought people to the account or introduced the practice to thousands of local customers.
But views tell you that someone looked. They don’t tell you what someone remembered. That’s a much more important marketing question.
Don’t Let the Hook Become Bigger Than the Business
There is a lesson here for content creators too. We talk constantly about hooks because hooks matter. You need to give someone a reason to stop scrolling, click the video or keep reading. But eventually the hook needs to connect to something.
If your opening is incredible but has almost nothing to do with the content that follows, you might get views without building the audience you actually want. If your personality becomes more memorable than your expertise, that might be wonderful for entertainment content but less useful if you’re trying to become known for something specific.
The same thing can happen to a brand. Novig created an enormous hook. Her name is Sydney Sweeney. Now the question is whether enough people move from “Did you see that Sydney Sweeney commercial?” to “Have you heard of Novig?” That’s the conversion I’d be watching.
So, Did the Novig Commercial Work?
I think the answer is frustratingly complicated.
As an awareness play, it’s difficult to argue with the amount of attention the campaign generated. Millions of people saw it, major news outlets covered it, professional athletes responded to it and Novig became part of a national conversation almost overnight.
If the goal was get people talking, mission accomplished. If the goal was get people talking about Novig’s actual product, I’m less convinced. And personally, I don’t love the strategy. I think using sexuality to draw men toward a sports gambling product is questionable, especially when the sports themselves feel more like props than the actual heart of the campaign.
But that’s also why this commercial is worth studying. Marketing doesn’t have to be tasteful to be effective. It doesn’t have to be sophisticated to get attention, either. The bigger lesson is that getting attention and earning meaningful interest are not the same thing.
Novig got the attention. Now we’ll find out whether people remember the business.
If you want to see the live stream I did over on my YouTube channel about this topic, hit play and watch it below!
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FAQ: Sydney Sweeney’s Novig Commercial
What is the Sydney Sweeney Novig commercial?
The commercial is part of Novig’s “Just Sports” campaign, which launched September 9, 2026 as the company’s first national brand campaign. It features Sydney Sweeney posing with sports equipment while promoting Novig’s sports-focused prediction market.
What is Novig?
Novig is a sports prediction market platform focused exclusively on sports. The company has positioned that sports-only focus as a difference between Novig and broader prediction markets that also offer markets involving politics, current events and other topics.
Does Sydney Sweeney own part of Novig?
Yes. Novig identifies Sweeney as a strategic partner and equity holder in the company, and CEO Jacob Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that Sweeney approached Novig about the partnership. That makes the campaign more than a traditional celebrity endorsement because Sweeney has a financial stake in the company.
Why are female athletes criticizing the Novig ad?
Several female athletes have criticized the campaign for sexualizing women in the context of sports. Athletes including Ariarne Titmus, Amy Hunt and Gracie Kramer have argued that the campaign undermines efforts to have female athletes recognized for their abilities and accomplishments rather than their bodies.
Was the Sydney Sweeney Novig commercial successful?
It has certainly been successful at generating attention, with millions of views and widespread media coverage. Whether that attention translates into greater recognition of Novig’s product, new users and lasting brand awareness is a separate question, and ultimately a more useful measurement of the campaign’s business impact.
