Sydney Sweeney’s nearly nude appearance in an ad for Novig, a “sports prediction market,” which is a polite way of saying a sports betting business, certainly raised a fuss. She’s the girl-next-door beautiful actress and model the media and feminists love to hate. They, and some female athletes, huffed that by posing with a variety of examples of sports equipment, Sweeney was “sexualizing” female athletes.
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I gave some attention to the uproar at my home blog, but haven’t commented here at American Thinker until now.
To be sure, the feminist outrage was just a bit hypocritical, but no less hypocritical than the hypocrisy of female athletes. Sweeney has never pretended to be an athlete, though she credibly played one—a boxer—in the movies, and she maintains a pleasingly muscular, female figure.
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Sex sells, and Sweeney is an obvious example of that kind of marketability. Plenty of female athletes, actresses, models, and even entertainers have posed nude or nearly so in the past, and for specifically sports-focused publications. The uniforms of female swimmers, divers, gymnasts, track and field athletes, volleyball and beach volleyball players, and even bicyclists aren’t designed with the goal of absolute female modesty, and they certainly help increase viewership of sports that would otherwise enjoy far less notoriety.
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Sweeney isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been often done before, but she’s arguably doing it better and more profitably, and that’s a little considered factor. Women in sports, and particularly entertainment, know that time is not on their side. Youth and beauty are fleeting, and while many women “age gracefully,” that’s seldom marketable in Hollywood. Sweeney is doing what many before her have done: maximizing their earning potential while their product—their attractiveness and sexual appeal—is still in demand.
Something else that has gone unnoticed, though remarkable, is that Sweeney is a smart businesswoman:
Novig, a sports-focused prediction market, has reportedly quadrupled its valuation to $2 billion after it targeted young men with racy ads featuring actress Sydney Sweeney posing fully nude with strategically placed sports gear.
The prediction market – a smaller competitor to platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, which rival traditional sportsbooks – raised new funding at a $2 billion valuation, up from a $500 million valuation earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
Novig had built a small audience from its podcast and clinched a partnership with the New York Mets, but the platform took off after the “Euphoria” actress signed on as an equity investor and posed in her birthday suit for the company’s ads, which went viral online.
Sweeney put her money where her, um, body was, betting that she’d make money—a lot of money—by posing, and she was right as Novig’s valuation and her profit immediately skyrocketed. That kind of increase–$500 million to $2 billion—is rare indeed.
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Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky also stood by the ads, saying the company is “hugely supportive of women’s sports” and they “never intended to portray female sports.”
“It really was Sydney who’s driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging,” he said.
“Sydney’s an actress,” Fortinsky added. “We’re a prediction market that’s focused on sports, and that was the story she was communicating.”
Investors have been rushing to back prediction markets, even as the controversial betting platforms – which typically allow users to gamble on everything from sports to pop culture and politics – face regulatory concerns.
Fortinsky and Sweeney made a bet on her popularity—a hedge against future adverse legislation– and it paid off. Sweeney demonstrated that she’s more than the sum of her most prominent assets. She’s done nothing different than so many other young women before her, but she did it better and more profitably, which is probably what has so many of the eternally aggrieved so upset.
Jealousy is a powerful human trait, and one of the least attractive. Smart men appreciate intelligence and ability in a woman as much as beauty, and Sydney Sweeney has proved she has those qualities in abundance.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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