The biggest story in women’s sport over the past week hasn’t been about a female athlete. Or an athlete at all, in fact.
It’s been about an actress. And specifically, a naked one.
Novig is a newly-launched online betting company, or “sports prediction market”, as they call themselves. And they released an advert featuring American actress, Sydney Sweeney, in which she uses different pieces of sports equipment to cover her naked, or partially naked, body while she asks the viewer: “Think you know sports? Prove it”.
This campaign has, by all objective measures, been a masterclass in marketing. If the aim of an advertising campaign is to attract attention then Novig has managed it on a scale that any company in the world would be delighted by. The exposure this previously widely unheard-of brand has received over the past week has been astronomical. Indeed, Novig isn’t even available to people outside of the US yet it’s received global exposure. The advert has been watched millions upon millions of times - it’s attracted nearly 60 million views on Sweeney’s personal Instagram page alone - and people across the globe are talking about this new betting company so, in marketing terms, well played.
But the backlash from many female athletes to the advert has been fierce. Dozens of sportswomen have posted videos or pictures of themselves excelling in their own particular sport with a caption along the lines of: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women’s sport looks like”. Indeed, British sprinter, Amy Hunt, called out Sweeney in the aftermath of one of her races at the World Athletics Ultimate Championships saying “This is what women in sport look like… Muscles, hard work, blood, sweat and tears.” Australian Olympic swimming champion, Ariarne Titmus, also chimed in, commenting: “Not only is it (the advert) a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft, but every woman who enjoys sports for what it really is.” The list of other female athletes who have joined the push-back against the advert is lengthy.
I’m not a particular fan of Sweeney as an actress, or the way she constantly sexualises herself in order to further her career but each to their own and there’s no denying that she's also, individually, played a blinder here. Sweeney has recently joined Novig as an equity partner and so will directly benefit from the increased revenue that will inevitably be generated off the back of this viral marketing campaign.
And so, on a base level, this advert has done exactly what it set out to do, which is generate attention and, in turn, increase its customer base. Given the majority of individuals who bet on sports are men, it makes sense to have used a conventionally attractive woman in the advertising campaign, and makes even more sense to have her take her clothes off given sex sells.
There are many who argue that this marketing campaign goes no deeper than this. That Novig is doing what so many companies have done before and that’s use a good-looking, semi-naked female to sell their product. The argument continues that there is no hidden meaning behind this advert and no intention to denigrate women’s sport or female athletes. Certainly Novig is far from the first company to use someone other than a professional athlete to promote what isn’t even a sports product but merely a sports-adjacent product.
Read more: Could Oscar Onley possibly be the next Chris Froome?
Eilish McColgan on her "smooth" recovery from a broken toe, and her return to racing
But there are many, many others who argue that actually, an advert of this nature, and this advert specifically, does indeed harm women’s sport by reducing women's sport to appearance alone.
And while I’m not exactly internally combusting when watching a naked Sweeney talk about “sports” - I very much subscribe to the belief that there’s other, more pressing challenges facing female athletes than a 58 second-long advert for a betting company - I admit I do find it all pretty disheartening that, still, seemingly the best way to attract attention is not use one of the hundreds of truly inspiring female athletes across any number of sports who are at the top of their game but, instead, get a woman to strip off and straddle a basketball hoop.
Because while this advert isn’t going to single-handedly destroy women’s sport - nothing of the sort - it is yet another blow to female athletes who, time and time again, struggle to generate attention for just being good at sport.
Women’s sport and female athletes struggling to attract the spotlight is, of course, nothing new.
For literally decades, females athletes have fought to be taken seriously and battled against being ignored unless they are what is deemed by society to be conventionally “attractive”, as well as an excellent athlete. Serena Williams is the best female tennis player who has ever lived but was often derided for being “too muscly”. Ilona Maher, the US rugby player, is called “manly” just because she’s not got a body type that’s “normal” for a woman. Eilish McColgan has been vocal about the abuse she receives online from trolls for looking “too thin”.
And so women, and specifically female athletes, being judged by their body shape is nothing new.
Sweeney, though, isn’t a female athlete and so her highly-sexualised role in this campaign isn’t, as Irish footballer and 2014 Puskas nominee, Stephanie Zambra, points out, “trying to represent female athletes”. In this respect, she’s entirely right. Sweeney isn’t pretending to be a female athlete, or even good at sport.
But what Novig’s campaign reminds us all is that, despite the increase in popularity of women’s sport and the raised profile that many female athletes enjoy these days in comparison to even a decade ago, is that this popularity still feels far from secure. There remains a concern that women’s sport is never too far away from being derided by perhaps not all observers, but certainly some.
It’s still not difficult to find someone slagging-off the standard of women’s sport, or criticising a female athlete for something or another. There just isn’t this worry around men’s sport. Women’s sport, and it’s place in society, feels far more fragile than has ever been the case for men’s sport.
I am partially in agreement with the argument that the best thing to have done with this Novig advert, and with the naked Sweeney, would have been to ignore it. To have let it blend in with the countless other advertising campaigns that use scantily-clad women to sell products. But the danger, as so often is the case, is that while ignoring it would have avoided this week’s brouhaha, it also wouldn’t have furthered the cause for female athletes who want to be taken seriously for what they do, and not how they look.
In the long run, failing to acknowledge something is rarely the best answer. Indeed, the best answer is to do what so many female athletes have done over the past week and that’s shout about how incredible they are at sport. So while Sweeney will continue to attract attention for getting naked, I’d rather focus my attention on the actual female athletes who are, in my view, worthy of far more attention than an actress stripping off.
