Sydney Sweeney’s latest ad campaign is costing her followers, but not the kind of numbers you might expect. New data from Social Blade shows the actress dropped 136,848 Instagram followers on Sunday and another 68,000 on Monday, after her nude Novig sports-betting commercial started making the rounds. In the ad, Sweeney appears covered only by sports equipment.
The reaction that stung the most came from women who’ve actually competed at the highest level. Retired Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus said she couldn’t describe how infuriated she felt watching it, adding that there’s a big difference between looking sexy because you do sport and using sex to sell sport. Gymnast Gracie Kramer, sprinter Bree Rizzo, and WBC world champion boxer Skye Nicolson all voiced similar criticism.
Sweeney isn’t apologizing. She’s called the campaign confident, humorous, and playful, and she followed it up by sharing ESPN Body Issue covers on her Instagram. It’s also worth putting the follower loss in perspective: those 200,000-plus unfollows amount to less than one percent of her 25.7 million followers, and this isn’t her first ad controversy after last year’s American Eagle dustup. So where do you land? Should actresses front sports-betting ads, or does that job belong to the athletes?
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Ava Hart
Ava Hart is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.
