Last week, sports-only prediction market Novig released an advertisement featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, who appeared totally nude save for a series of strategically placed sports equipment. Since then, scores of professional female athletes from around the world have ripped the spot, saying it hypersexualizes women’s relationship to sports.
Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky responded to the backlash onstage Tuesday at the Front Office Sports Asset Class event in New York.
“As a company we’re hugely supportive of women’s sports, and it’s a huge component of our platform,” Fortinsky said. “We never intended to portray female sports. Sydney is an actress, the biggest movie star in the world. We’re a prediction market focused on sports. That is the story she was communicating.”
He indicated that Sweeney, who is an equity holder in Novig, served as the campaign’s creative lead: “It was a very exciting process to work with her, both on the commercial side and the creative side. It really was Sydney who was driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging.”
The goal of the ad, Fortinsky said, was to “introduce [Novig] to the nation” ahead of football season and “close the gap from a brand-awareness perspective” between it and prediction-market leaders, like Kalshi and Polymarket. “We asked ourselves who would be the best person to grab the attention of the public to make Novig a household name,” he explained. “Sydney approached us, but from there it was a very obvious decision.”
On X/Twitter, Novig’s post sharing the ad has garnered more than 12 million views; on Instagram, it has surpassed 47 million. That’s roughly 400 times higher than the company’s next-most-recent video post on the platform.
Novig formally launched in August. Fortinsky told FOS at Asset Class that the company “just passed a billion dollars in cumulative volume,” claiming that marks the fastest start of any prediction market in history.
For the Novig CEO, the attention from the Sweeney spot outweighs the pushback. “There are a lot of people that have feelings about Sydney as a person that predate this campaign. Working with her, we obviously expected the people who already hate her would be loud and vocal,” Fortinsky said. “Ultimately, I think she did a great job at conveying the essence of our company and we’ve been very happy with how positive the feedback has been overall.”
