Sydney Sweeney Invokes Serena Williams And Ronda Rousey In Ad Backlash

When the backlash over her Novig ad started piling up, Sydney Sweeney had two options: address it directly, or let a carefully chosen set of Instagram Stories do the talking. She went with the second one - and the athletes she picked to make her point say almost as much as the ad itself.

Sweeney hasn't commented directly on the criticism surrounding the Novig ad, in which she appears wearing little more than sports equipment while delivering the brand's tagline about betting on sports rather than politics or wars. But on Sunday, she posted a series of photographs on her Instagram Stories that read as an unmistakable rebuttal, even without a single word of explanation attached.

The Athletes She Chose to Highlight

The lineup was specific and pointed. On the women's side: tennis legend Serena Williams, former UFC champion Ronda Rousey, basketball star Sue Bird, footballer Megan Rapinoe, and tennis player Caroline Wozniacki - each of whom has previously posed for minimal-clothing photoshoots, most notably ESPN's long-running Body Issue. She rounded it out with a set of male athletes too: NFL stars Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, and Jason Kelce, along with NBA center Karl-Anthony Towns.

The Argument Embedded in the Selection

Sweeney never spelled out her reasoning in words, but the implication of the post is straightforward: elite athletes - including some of the most decorated women in sports history - have posed with similarly minimal clothing before, without facing the same scale of backlash currently aimed at her.

By pairing women's sports icons with male athletes who've done the same thing, she also seemed to be pushing back on any suggestion that this is specifically about women's bodies being used to sell something.

Why That Comparison Didn't Land the Way She May Have Hoped

The reaction to Sweeney's post wasn't universally sympathetic, and the specific criticism worth noting is the one aimed directly at the comparison itself. One commenter wrote plainly that treating the ESPN Body Issue as equivalent to the Novig campaign "shows how badly you have missed the point." The distinction critics are drawing isn't about nudity or minimal clothing in the abstract - it's about context and ownership: athletes posing to celebrate their own bodies and achievements in an editorial context built around athletic accomplishment, versus an actor's body being used to sell a sports betting product she isn't competing in.

What This Says About the Standoff

Sweeney's choice not to directly engage with her critics, paired with a post that implicitly argues "this has been done before, by people you already respect," is its own kind of statement - one that sidesteps an apology while still pushing back on the idea that she did anything unprecedented. Whether that framing holds up depends entirely on whether people see the comparison as fair, and based on the response so far, that's exactly where the disagreement remains stuck.