A sports betting advertisement is supposed to sell sports betting. Novig’s latest campaign however, has managed to spark a much larger conversation about what women are expected to look like in sports. 

Novig, an up-and-coming sports betting franchise, recently released an advertisement featuring the both famous and infamous actress Sydney Sweeney. According to Novig, the ad was intended to serve as a provocative gambling incentive and was meant to generate attention, and generate attention it did.

Sweeney is seen throughout many clips posing in the nude, with different sporting gear covering her intimate areas.

 “Just sports,” says Sweeney throughout the ad, emphasizing the use of the betting platform. But this ad is not actually about “just sports” at all. 

These clips sparked rightful outrage across the internet and the world of women’s sports. Women in sports have battled for several generations to be taken seriously. It is painfully common for female athletes to be judged on their sex appeal rather than their athleticism and to face endless amounts of infantilization due to their perceived femininity. This is not an isolated blip in the media—this pattern can be traced back decades. 

Many have always seen women’s sports as a sexualized spectacle rather than a showcase of athleticism. In the 1940s and 50s, the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGBPL) would only allow the female athletes to wear mini skirts and tight shirts, in fear that their athleticism would make them appear insufficiently feminine. In the 2010s, Sports Illustrated released a photo shoot of Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn—and instead of recognizing her achievements, Sports Illustrated (along with the rest of the world) honed in on her bodily features. 

Female athletes have fought to have their strength and dedication recognized before their appearance. Yet advertisements like this reinforce the idea that a woman’s body can be more valuable as a prop for sports media than as a tool to perform a sport they have trained for. The message is particularly damaging in a culture where young women are already exposed to enormous pressure around their appearances. 

The audience also matters. Novig is selling a gambling product, and the advertisement was deliberately designed to attract attention. Novig’s CEO has defended the campaign as a way to put the company into a national conversation. But when the easiest way to make sports betting “entertaining” is to put a conventionally attractive woman in front of a camera with barely any clothes on, it reinforces an old idea: women’s bodies serve as men’s entertainment, no matter their athletic ability. That does not just affect the women already playing professionally. It affects the girls watching them.

Women have spent decades fighting to get onto the field. They should not now have to fight to be seen as athletes once they are finally there.