Sydney Sweeney didn't just lend her face to sports prediction platform Novig, she bought in as an equity partner, a deal that puts real money behind the ad campaign that drew sharp criticism from female athletes worldwide.
The 29-year-old actress appeared in a largely nude advertisement for Novig, a sports prediction market app, posing with strategically placed footballs and sports apparel across various athletic settings. The ad debuted September 9 and racked up 2.1 million likes on Sweeney's Instagram page. But the numbers only tell part of the story. Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky told Front Office Sports that Sweeney contacted the company directly about a partnership, and walked away with a seat on the cap table.
Fortinsky declined to disclose the size of Sweeney's ownership stake or what she was paid for the campaign. Novig was valued at $500 million in February, per Fortune, making even a small slice worth real money. And Sweeney, by all accounts, wanted more than a standard endorsement check.
Fortinsky made clear that the ad was Sweeney's vision as much as Novig's. He told the New York Post that Sweeney drove much of the creative direction herself.
"It really was Sydney who's driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging."
That distinction matters. This wasn't a case of a company exploiting an actress for clicks. Sweeney sought out the deal, shaped the campaign, and took an ownership stake that ties her financial upside directly to Novig's growth. In an interview with Complex, she framed the arrangement as deliberate.
"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."
She added that she believed in Fortinsky as a founder and wanted a collaborative partnership, not a transactional one. Fortinsky, for his part, was blunt about the upside of having a polarizing campaign.
"Sydney is great at captivating audiences and being the center of attention. In some sense, it forces us into the national discourse."
Mission accomplished on that front. The campaign generated over 40 million Instagram views and sent Novig searches surging, according to the New York Post's reporting.
The backlash from the athletics world was immediate and personal. Four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, one of Australia's most decorated athletes, posted a pointed response.
"I can't describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this. How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sport is still a thing?"
British sprinter Amy Hunt piled on with her own response, writing: "Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like. Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears." Former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer and Chinese-German rugby player Sofie Fella also publicly condemned the ad.
Fox News reported that Sweeney responded indirectly, not with an apology, but by posting ESPN Magazine "Body Issue" covers on social media. Those covers featured athletes like Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, and Megan Rapinoe posing nude or semi-nude. The message was unmistakable: nude imagery in sports isn't new, and athletes themselves have embraced it.
Fortinsky backed Sweeney's position. He told the New York Post the ad was never intended to represent female athletes.
"Sydney's an actress. We're a prediction market that is focused on sports, and that was the story she was communicating."
The ad itself carries a specific message beyond the provocative visuals. Sweeney urges viewers to "forget about politics" and focus on sports. Breitbart reported that Novig launched nationwide under a federally regulated framework with a 21-and-over age requirement, and the platform explicitly excludes prediction markets on politics, wars, and deaths, a notable carve-out in an industry where competitors have let users bet on everything from elections to geopolitical conflicts.
Sweeney described the campaign's intent in straightforward terms.
"The campaign was about embracing a fun idea. The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports."
Fortinsky echoed that framing, saying Sweeney "helped bring that message to life in a way that's impossible to ignore." Whether the controversy helped or hurt depends on which metric you care about. Sweeney reportedly lost followers over the ad. But Novig, a startup that launched just weeks before the campaign, landed in the national conversation overnight.
The unanswered questions are the ones Fortinsky won't touch. He refused to disclose how much Sweeney was paid or what percentage of Novig she now owns. For a company valued at half a billion dollars, those details would tell the public whether Sweeney made a savvy investment or simply collected a creative fee dressed up as equity.
What the public record does show is a pattern. Sweeney didn't wait for Novig to come to her. She initiated the conversation, negotiated equity instead of a flat fee, inserted herself into the creative process, and then defended the final product when the criticism landed. That's not how most celebrity endorsements work. Most celebrities cash the check and let the brand's PR team handle the fallout.
Despite the backlash, Novig has already planned additional campaigns featuring Sweeney, treating the controversy as an acceptable cost for the attention it generated. Fortinsky told Front Office Sports he was "very excited to have her on the cap table."
The athletes who objected raised a fair point about how women in sports are portrayed. But Sweeney's ESPN rebuttal landed, too, the line between empowerment and exploitation has never been as clean as critics pretend. And the fact that Sweeney owns a piece of the company changes the math entirely. She isn't being used. She's a stakeholder who bet on provocation and, so far, is cashing in.
In a culture that lectures women about empowerment while policing the choices they make with their own careers and their own bodies, Sweeney picked the option that put her name on the cap table, and dared the outrage machine to do something about it.