Novig CEO Says Sydney Sweeney Drove Visuals and Messaging of Nude Ad

On Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky used an onstage appearance at the Front Office Sports Asset Class event in New York to answer mounting criticism of a nude advertisement featuring actress Sydney Sweeney, saying the equity-holding star helped drive the campaign’s look and message and that the spot was not meant to depict women’s sports. The ad had been released the previous Wednesday, Sept. 9, and within days drew public objections from professional female athletes who said it sexualized women’s connection to sports, according to Front Office Sports.

Fortinsky’s defense was direct: “As a company we’re hugely supportive of women’s sports, and it’s a huge component of our platform,” he 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 also indicated Sweeney was not simply a paid face in front of the camera, telling the audience, “It really was Sydney who was driving a lot of the visuals and the messaging,” in remarks reported by FOS.

Fortinsky frames Sweeney as creative lead, not just celebrity placement

The CEO cast the campaign as a national introduction timed to football season and an attempt to “close the gap from a brand-awareness perspective” with better-known prediction-market names such as 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,” Fortinsky said, adding that “Sydney approached us” before the partnership came together, according to the same FOS account.

That account is consistent with what Fortinsky told FOS shortly after the ad dropped: he said Sweeney had been “interested in some kind of equity partnership,” became an equity holder, and “helped craft” the sports-only message. He declined to disclose her ownership stake or how much she was paid. In the earlier interview, he argued the celebrity association “forces us into the national discourse,” and said more Sweeney spots were planned, including one focused on responsible trading, as reported by Front Office Sports on Sept. 10.

The one-minute ad features Sweeney nude apart from strategically placed sports equipment and repeatedly uses the word “sports” to underline Novig’s narrower product focus. In the ad she echoes language Fortinsky had posted: “No wars. No death. No politics. Just sports.” Sweeney told Complex the spot was meant to “really bring the concept of ‘just sports’ to life,” according to FOS’s earlier report.

Female athletes say the ad crossed a line

The backlash has come from identifiable athletes rather than anonymous social-media criticism. Australian swimmer Ariarne Titmus, an eight-time Olympic medalist, wrote on Instagram that the ad was “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft,” and asked how “monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing.” British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed it after finishing fourth in the 200m final at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, telling BBC Sport: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like.” Those responses were detailed in FOS’s Sept. 14 report.

FOS also reported that American rhythmic gymnast Gracie Kramer, Australian runner Bree Rizzo and Australian swimmer Brianna Throssell were among current and former athletes posting similar objections, while the Australian Institute for Sport responded on Instagram with a compilation of women’s sports clips captioned, “THIS is sports.” Sweeney appeared to answer indirectly over the weekend by posting old covers from ESPN’s The Body Issue, the discontinued annual edition in which athletes posed nude or semi-nude; FOS noted ESPN The Magazine ceased publication in 2019. Novig did not respond to FOS’s request for comment about the athletes’ criticism before that report.

Attention is measurable; cause is not independently established

The posts surrounding the ad produced large reported engagement snapshots. FOS said Novig’s X post sharing the ad had more than 11 million views as of Monday afternoon, Sept. 14, and more than 40 million on Instagram; in its Tuesday report, FOS said the X post had passed 12 million views and Instagram had surpassed 47 million. Those figures are useful as time-stamped snapshots of distribution, but they do not by themselves establish that the ad caused trading activity, account growth or lasting brand gains.

Fortinsky argued that the attention outweighed the pushback and described the overall response as positive, while acknowledging that some reaction to Sweeney predated the campaign. “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,” he said Tuesday, per FOS.

Novig formally launched in August, according to FOS. The company’s own June release describes an exchange-based sports market in which customers trade directly with one another and says the platform maintains a 21+ age requirement; that company description is background rather than independent verification of market performance. For readers, the immediate development is narrower than a national ad controversy: a sports-only prediction market made a deliberate celebrity-equity bet, its CEO publicly took responsibility for the strategy on Sept. 15, and prominent women athletes are challenging whether the campaign’s “just sports” message separated sports from the sexualization of women.