Sydney Sweeney did more than front Novig’s latest campaign. She became an equity partner and creative director before the ad launched, helping shape a video that pushed the sports prediction market startup into a much larger cultural conversation.
The minute-long social media ad, titled 'Just Sports,' showed Sweeney talking up the platform while wearing no clothes and barely covering herself with a football and other sports gear. The campaign sparked debate over the sexualization of women in sports, but it also delivered reach: tens of millions of views across X and Instagram, and more than 1.2 million Instagram likes on Sweeney’s Novig post.
Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky said Sweeney approached the company because she was attracted to its exclusive focus on sports-event contracts and wanted to become a shareholder rather than simply serve as the face of a one-off campaign, according to Front Office Sports. Unlike competitors such as Polymarket and Kalshi, Novig focuses solely on sports. Fortinsky said that approach drew Sweeney to the company and was reflected in the script.
The terms of Sweeney’s equity partnership, including the size of her stake, were not disclosed. Novig declined to comment on them. But the company’s value and the structure of the deal suggest a different playbook from a standard endorsement check: Novig is valued at roughly $500 million, while Polymarket is valued at more than $20 billion.
Sweeney’s role also went beyond ownership. According to a source familiar with the matter, she served as a creative partner and acted as a hands-on 'mastermind' who shaped every stage of the creative, commercial and visual process. That source said she oversaw the choice of music, guided specific camera angles and shot coverage, and revised the script.
The market has already voted on the campaign’s first result. Polymarket posted a similarly timed ad with A-list athletes and celebrities, but its Instagram post received fewer than 55,000 likes, far below Novig’s tally. For an early-stage company, that gap matters because, as brand strategist Shruti Saini put it, 'If you’re Novig, you probably can’t outspend Polymarket. So you have to out-attention them.'
That is the modern rule of celebrity marketing: capital can buy placement, but attention decides whether a campaign breaks through. Sweeney’s involvement gave Novig something money alone could not guarantee — a viral moment, a shareholder-aligned pitch, and a direct hand in the creative output.
The same formula has worked before. In October 2024, Sweeney appeared in a Dr. Squatch ad that went viral, later pitching the idea of selling a limited-edition soap made with her actual bathwater. The release was capped at 5,000 bars priced at $8 each and sold out within seconds. As with Novig, the real asset was not just the product. It was the leverage created when a celebrity helps engineer the message, not merely appear in it.
