It turns out I have my pick of stupid controversies to weigh in on this week. I actually started this column off with the idea that I’d dive into the fracas surrounding University of Texas quarterback Arch Manning, who found himself beset by the harpies of sports media over the fact that he confessed to finding humor in an off-color and absurd AI meme on Tuesday. About 1000 words in, with lots more to say, I realized I was on track to write a book rather than a column and I needed to stop. Find a more succinct take on that controversy here.
So I settled on this latest Sydney Sweeney kerfuffle.
Sweeney owns a piece of Novig, which is a sports betting app. You might recognize that sports betting apps almost exclusively cater to male customers; gambling is mostly a male activity, period, and gambling on sports is a turbocharged version of that. So when Sweeney and her partners decided that one preferred mode of appealing to that core demographic would be for her to star in an ad sans clothing, her sensitive areas covered by footballs and other sports paraphernalia, you can’t really fault the logic. (RELATED: Danger Signs for Sports Gambling)
It turns out that men like looking at Sydney Sweeney. It’s not that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world — she does just fine, obviously — but rather that she has a vibe and personality around her which is charismatic and fun. As such, she’s pretty good for selling products, and particularly to men. It also turns out that there is a gigantic sports betting market out there which rests comfortably in the demographic — men between 18 and 49 — most likely to have an affinity for Sydney Sweeney. A recent poll by The New York Times/Siena had just under half of the male 18-49 set holding an account with a sports betting app. (RELATED: America’s Sydney Sweeney Crisis)
So yeah. Having Sydney Sweeney be your brand ambassador if you’re a sports betting app is a really good idea. Good enough to give her a piece of the company.
But with women? Let’s say appreciation for her is a little less unanimous.
Especially among women of a certain type.
No sooner did the Novig ad pop out than an outrage mob I can only describe as the Sisterhood of the Perpetually Aggrieved, including a lot of the same people who demanded that Arch Manning grovel for finding humor in a meme on the internet, went completely howl-at-the-moon insane over it.
And weirdly, the most aggrieved of the Perpetually Aggrieved are apparently women’s athletes.
Sydney Sweeney’s naked sports betting ad for Novig is sparking backlash from Olympic athletes.
“I don’t know wtf Sydney Sweeney was doing, but it’s 2026. Stop sexualizing women in sport,” wrote British athlete Lucy Davis.
Ariarne Titmus, a former Australian swimming champion,… pic.twitter.com/Nl2ZMhnGkv
— Variety (@Variety) September 14, 2026
And of course, female academics. Of course!
Brands have largely moved away from a scantily-clad-women ad strategy, but female athletes still can’t escape a focus on their appearance and sexualized portrayals haven’t completely disappeared. Female athletes see [the Sweeney ad] as a step backward.https://t.co/ElhywrPPpz
— Amy Diehl, Ph.D. (@amydiehl) September 16, 2026
Before we get too far down the road here, we’ll make a pit stop and stipulate that using sex to sell gambling isn’t exactly a high calling. I have at most a very limited brief for this ad or the company commissioning it. The casinos and the betting apps are in business to relieve you of your money, and generally speaking, gambling is for suckers. I say that as somebody who, in a previous life, was really pretty good at betting on football and made some money doing it before I realized — thankfully soon enough not to suffer for the acquisition of this knowledge — that it wasn’t a hobby with a good future to it. (RELATED: The Next Social Epidemic Is Already Here: Legalized Sports Gambling)
And while sex sells, and always has, there is nothing particularly virtuous about putting it out there as bait.
So I’ll call myself ambivalent about this. But what I will say is this business of female athletes screeching about the insult Sydney Sweeney is inflicting on their profession might be the dumbest thing I’ve seen this summer — and that is saying something.
The ad isn’t about women’s sports; it’s about sports betting.
Not to mention the entitled grasping of insisting that Sydney Sweeney doing a commercial spot with footballs obstructing her bare boobs has something to do with female athletics. Exactly who thinks this?
She’s not a female athlete; she’s an actress and a model. The ad isn’t about women’s sports; it’s about sports betting. Which means, because almost nobody bets on women’s sports, it’s about men’s sports and men who bet on sports. Why is this suddenly about women’s sports?
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Of course, we know why. We know that the angry, narcissistic feminists who run leagues like the WNBA and NWSL have insisted they be treated as equals with men. They’re constantly complaining that they don’t make the same money as the men do, even though none of them could make a men’s team and none of their leagues make money. (RELATED: The WNBA Meets the Tax Man)
Why? Because most women don’t care about sports. Men care about sports, men bet on sports, men watch sports. Sports are, generally speaking, men’s spaces. Women’s sports have come a long way, but mostly at the sufferance of men.
The NBA subsidizes the WNBA, for example. College athletic departments depend on football and men’s basketball to carry the revenue burden for all of the other sports, and most of those athletic departments have more women’s sports than men’s sports. Almost no women’s athletic programs turn a profit.
And nobody complains about this. Most people think it’s great that women get an opportunity to compete in athletics and pursue excellence in that venue. Which is correct — we need more people pursuing excellence, in whatever outlet is available. That pursuit makes us better, individually and as a group. And the interest in that pursuit, which includes gambling, for all of its manifest faults, does translate into support for those who chase excellence.
What I’m getting at here is there is a certain golden-goose phenomenon at work.
The people throwing a fit over Sydney Sweeney’s buxom, er, personality gracing a sports betting ad and aggrandizing themselves as the gatekeepers for what women in sports can and should be might want to take a beat and think things through.
Because you’re going to want to avoid irritating the target market for Novig’s ad. Alienate those people, and you will find the small audience for your athletic endeavors has shrunk even more.
Especially when female athletes posing nude, or nearly so, as a way to promote their own personal brands is something that has gone on since before Sydney Sweeney was around. At whom do you think those covers of ESPN the Magazine or Sports Illustrated were aimed, after all?
Becoming a joyless scold at Sydney Sweeney’s intrusion into this space has the effect of telling those men — a big chunk of the audience you have, after all — who they can look at and who they can’t. What makes you so sure they’ll choose you instead of her?
I don’t have numbers to back this, but it’s my sense that there are more men interested in women’s sports because they get a thrill out of watching hot, athletic women play golf or tennis or basketball than there are women watching, or men who appreciate the quality of play.
And if I’m right about this, then the real pushback against Sydney Sweeney is that she’s horning in on their action. I don’t know that this gives them the high ground.
I especially don’t know where female athletes get the idea they somehow are the gatekeepers when it comes to sex appeal and men’s sports people bet on.
Continue pushing this, and don’t be surprised when lots of people roll their eyes and say “I’m done.” And support for women’s athletics begins to wane, because who wants to further empower a class of whiny, screeching, and scoldy feminists who insist on equality right up to the point where the price has to be paid for it? (RELATED: Feminism, the Nose-Ring Theory, and Our Potential Extinction)
If you don’t like Sydney Sweeney’s ad, fine. Don’t use Novig as your sports betting app. You probably ought not to have one anyway. But we’re getting pretty far past the point where performative outrage is cute anymore, and this fiasco, just like the one young Mr. Manning found himself in this week, is a clear example of why the fatigue exists.
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