Much ado regarding Sydney Sweeney’s latest ad campaign. This time it’s for the sports betting app Novig. In case you missed it, the 60-second video features Syd, mostly naked, in various sports-related vignettes, monologuing about how Novig is a betting app for Just Sports, the tagline. People were scandalized by the nudity, and a certain cohort of narcissistic women found the ad particularly earth-shattering.
All of this would have stayed in my peripherals and out of this newsletter if not for Sydney revealing that she STOLE MY FREAKING IDEA from one of the biggest Glossier campaigns of my career.
So basically, for the past two weeks, I’ve been doing a deep-dive into Sweeneyland. As woman, as a founder, as a consumer, as an ad guy, as someone who is also frequently villainized for being too hot . . . there are so many overlaps to explore between my world and hers.
Before wading through the controversy, let’s try to be objective: was the Novig ad a success?
Sweeney By The Numbers
Venture-backed private companies love to obscure performance data, but Novig did tell CNBC Monday, 20 days after go-live, that they experienced impressive-sounding surges in both trading volume and new user activity.
While Novig’s founder said he’s happy with the campaign, he attributed their growth just as much to the official start of the NFL season, which coincided with the ad drop on September 9. Sports betting in general saw 2-3x surges in activity by virtue of it being the first week of the season, so Novig used Sydney to ride that wave with as much brand awareness as possible.
“Sydney Sweeney sports ad” was the #2 most popular Google search in the US a week after go-live (just after “how do I register to vote”), though, as all the geniuses reading this know, cultural awareness doesn’t necessarily translate to profits. When comparing growth metrics over that same time period, several competing prediction markets posted larger percentage increases in trading volume than Novig.
The ultimate tell for how much the ad boosted business is that Novig is currently #1 in the US App Store in Sports, right above its well-established competitors DraftKings and FanDuel, streaming apps DAZN and ESPN, and the official NFL app which rounds out the top six. They only launched their prediction market business in August and were reportedly hovering around #50 prior to Sept. 9.
It’s hard not to take into account the fact that Novig is a Y Combinator darling, backed by some of the most serious investors in Silicon Valley (including Forerunner, a major backer from Glossier’s glory days). They’ve raised $100m so far, having just closed a $75m round in February, and are already out raising again at a $2b valuation (Jesus). Novig is not a scrappy little startup that struck gold with a viral campaign. The ad was a strategic part of what was already going to be a huge growth period for the heavily bankrolled company that is burning money on marketing and litigation with state gambling boards. It’s not like they have huge overhead—it’s an app, not a physical product.
Even though I’m not their target audience and my brain starts to slide out of my ear at the faintest mention of Kalshi or Polymarket, the Just Sports message somehow still pierced through the truly confounding visuals and Syd’s bored, monotone mumbling. The part that finally piqued my interest was the line at 45 seconds in: “no betting on wahrrs, or deaths, and no politics.”
So the ad “worked” in that it got their point across—users can only bet on sports. Just Sports. This is a foil to other prediction market apps, where users can place bets on Taylor Swift meeting the Pope or whether the US will invade [insert smaller country with vast natural resources here].
Novig is positioning itself as the lesser evil, I guess? Weird, because online sports betting in particular has coincided with a spike in diagnosed gambling addiction rates amongst young men—a more than 60% increase in states that legalized sports betting after the Supreme Court made it possible in 2018. This percentage doesn’t account for addicts who didn’t receive a clinical diagnosis; it’s safe to assume the gambling addition rate spike is much higher. Advocates for tighter regulations are calling this a public health crisis.
The Baited Ragers
If anyone should feel insulted by the ad, it’s Novig’s consumers, who are apparently undeserving of a concept that goes beyond “tits” from a company hell-bent on exploiting empowering them. Instead, I’m still seeing headlines almost a month later demanding Sydney apologize to FEMALE ATHLETES (screaming), who, by some seemingly impossible stretch of their collective imagination, think the ad is about them.
Looking to get their own share of the clickbait shitstorm, CNN interviewed an Australian pro surfer who claimed the ad “put women’s sports backwards.” Weirdly, several other mostly Australian female athletes released statements calling the ad a “kick in the face” and expressing pure outrage. Notably absent from the discourse is Australia’s most prominent female athlete in recent history, Olympic breakdancer Raygun. Non-Aussie female athletes joined in, and even Sydney’s Euphoria costar Sharon Stone criticized the ad as being detrimental to women’s sports.
Now I’m outraged, not at Sydney, but at the lack of media literacy amongst professional female athletes. Between endless trans-vestigations, the WNBA’s race war, and that lady shitting herself on the global stage to win a glorified CrossFit tournament (notably, Australian), if anyone lately has been undermining the legitimacy of women’s sports, it’s the athletes themselves. And they’ve got me using my newsletter to defend some Ivy League tech bros who are gobbling up all of the venture capital and freaking Sydney Sweeney—EVEN AFTER SHE RIPPED ME OFF!! (I swear I’ll get to this in a minute.)
The ad was overtly targeting straight male gooners. There was zero subliminal commentary on women—there was barely a concept!
Some of the angry pro athletes are even body-shaming Sydney, posting photos of themselves and claiming, “This is what a real female athlete looks like.” Does she get no credit for gaining 35 lbs of muscle while training to play boxing legend Christy Martin in the critically accl—uh, criticized 2025 film Christy? What about her teen years spent practicing MMA? What are we doing here, ladies? Gatekeeping women’s sports? **pause**
Of all the pro athletes who made a stink about Sydney, none had anything to say about the viral Callaway x Good Good Golf ad that dropped a week prior—the one with a female golfer being violently shoved to the ground by a popular male sports media personality for attempting to use a golf club.
Sadly, this is just one more example of why I wouldn’t wish being hot on my worst enemy: people don’t need a reason to hate you.
Reasons To Hate Sydney
I dug a little deeper to see if I could find a legitimate reason to hate Sydney for appearing in the ad. Like, does she have a vested interest in this potentially ruinously addictive betting app? Indeed she does! According to Novig, she approached them about the partnership, which included equity in exchange for the ad.
Next, I had to see if her highly successful, if PR-challenged, reported fiancé—Justin Bieber’s former manager, Taylor Swift’s archnemesis, and veneer enthusiast Scooter Braun—is an investor in Novig, too. I came across a very interesting Sept. 15 In Touch article, which not only exclusively reported their engagement (it’s literally the one outlet reporting it), but detailed concerns from an “insider” which are pertinent to the Novig ad:
One major concern centers around Braun’s alleged financial involvement in some of Sweeney’s business partnerships, which the insider claims the Housemaid star doesn’t fully know about.
“Scooter hasn’t disclosed investments to Sydney,” the insider shares. “Sydney has no idea the extent in which the money being paid to her from these partnerships is actually coming through a backdoor from Scooter.”
According to the insider, the talent manager . . . has “vested interests” in Novig, a sports prediction trading app, and Syrn, Sweeney’s lingerie brand.
[He’s] “pulling strings behind the scenes without her knowing. He’s maneuvering everything that will ultimately enrich him.”
The article went on to allege that Scooter went behind Syd’s back to arrange a photo op with her and one of the Novig guys at the US Open to drum up even more publicity for the app.
Sydney and Scooter reportedly met at the summer 2025 Bezos wedding. Of all the attendees, people seemed most surprised to learn that Syd is chummy with the new money billionaire tech oligarch crowd. Turns out, the Bezoses (and MAGA-certified Michael Dell) are major investors in Coatue’s Innovation Fund, which backs Syd’s brand Syrn as one of its only apparel investments (it typically invests in things like apps and semiconductors and AI tech). Syd is also starring in multiple projects for Bezos’s Amazon MGM Studios.
The wedding attendance was a precarious move for Sydney’s personal brand, with rumors of her ties to MAGA already swirling and the wildly inflammatory “Good Genes” ad dropping the following month, followed by widely-reported rumors of an ideological feud with her beloved Euphoria costars (Zendaya!!). Sydney had already been opening herself up to critiques from her female fanbase by stoking gossip that she was dating Glenn Powell while working on their 2023 romcom. His girlfriend at the time was pissed, they broke up, and she podcasted about it. Too, there was the time Sydney partnered with a men’s bodycare brand to sell soap made from her bathwater. I’m not the morality police, it’s just not the way I would prime my audience before launching a brand targeted to women.
Syrn, pronounced “siren” (though if you’re familiar with her work, it stands to reason that Sydney probably pronounces “siren” like “syrn”…), is Syd’s stab at SKIMS. The products, merchandising, and creative direction are beyond similar.
If the timelines are to be believed, Syrn started development a year prior to Syd meeting Scooter, so we don’t have any reason to blame him for her ill-advised entrée into lingerie. That credit should probably go to someone named Ben Schwerin, Syrn’s reported champion inside Coatue, who also attended the Bezos wedding. The pitch to Sydney must have been that she and Kim Kardashian are both controversial sexpots, so doing her own version of SKIMS would be like printing money. WRONG!
Rebrand Or Die
If Sydney had consulted me, I would have said that SKIMS only worked after decades of Kim cementing herself as a shapewear magician and sartorial contortionist. In fact, I’m not sure that there is a more perfect example of founder-product fit. She is a woman with a non-model body who wears the type of sexy, fashionable clothing so many non-model women wish they could, too. She’s been documenting her stylists jury-rigging boob tape and modifiying Spanx for her red carpet looks since before oversharing every intimate detail of one’s personal life was the norm. Kim should get as much credit for chipping away at the facade of Hollywood perfection as she does for upholding unrealistic beauty standards.
Sydney, on the other hand, had built zero credibility in the undergarments space before launching Syrn. I asked around, and my large-breasted friend said she ordered several bras with high hopes but was let down by the poor quality and customer service. The online reviews are few and far between, but the overarching theme on Reddit is that Syrn’s bra sizing is confusing and some shoppers expected larger sizes than the brand currently offers, given Sydney’s own enormous breasts. Some even speculate that Syrn doesn’t make Sydney’s true size and criticize her for always wearing bras that are too small.
Though there is no hard evidence to say whether or not Syrn is doing well, the same In Touch article which paints Sydney as a pawn in Scooter’s backroom business deals says the brand is struggling. Four days after the In Touch piece dropped, Page Six posted a glowingly positive article which refuted rumors that Sydney is bad for business and basically called anyone who thinks she doesn’t have agency over her own career a misogynistic fool. It also name-dropped her lawyer, agent, and manager, who are generally the same people who place these types of stories in tabloids to control the narratives around their clients.
Glaringly absent from the friendly Page Six piece, especially if you suspect it was planted by her own team, is any info about whether Scooter is an investor in Syrn or Novig or how Syrn is selling. Instead, it sets the stage for a rebrand, with an unidentified “industry expert” quoted saying, “Sydney had that rare thing where she’s super pretty, but women still loved her,” and that unfortunately Syrn just appeals too much to horndog men right now. It was also reported Monday that her man on the inside, Ben Schwerin, just left Coatue to start a new job at a billion-dollar AI startup, so I wonder what sort of support Syrn currently has at the fund.
My official diagnosis on Sydney’s personal brand is that it doesn’t matter if her rich boyfriend is putting money into her projects. That’s what rich boyfriends do. She’s a starlet; he’s an extremely well-connected entertainment exec and investor. The anecdote about the US Open photo op isn’t salacious—it’s what I’d hope he’s doing for her. I don’t know how many 45-year-old men you guys have met, but to imply that there is some sort of inherent power imbalance due to age between Scooter and a well-established 29-year-old woman is fantastical thinking.
I don’t think Scooter is masterminding Sydney’s career moves—I don’t think anyone is! It seems that she wants to be taken seriously as an actress, be a mercenary sexpot for male-focused brand deals, and sell her own products to women. Even the savviest celebrities rarely achieve two out of the three over the course of their careers, and Sydney wants them all at once. She makes it harder on herself by choosing to be loud about the most unappealing aspects of her personal life (sorry to Scooter—her female fanbase no doubt includes Swifties and Beliebers, and I’ve historically lost male followers with every boyfriend reveal), while not sharing anything that builds affinity or credibility with the audience she’s already cultivated.
Though he denies it, WME’s Ari Emanuel reportedly told Sydney to drop Scooter for the sake of her career when she was shopping for a new agent earlier this year. She ended up signing with CAA, but if Sydney really wants to have it all—the acting career, the sex appeal, the panties, the investment portfolio, the problematic boyfriend, the virally controversial ad deals, the friendship with Lauren Bezos—there is only one person who can make that happen for her. Unfortunately for Sydney, Kris Jenner seems to have her hands full.
We ran out of time in today’s newsletter, so I’ll have to tell you about Sydney stealing my BODY HERO campaign references, and how to be a naked jock in ways that women appreciate in the next newsletter. Prepare for a looong walk down Glossier memory lane.
xxAnnie
I feel like we are angry at her for the wrong reasons, but we should be angry with her for the right reasons. For me, any celeb doing a betting app commercial gets an express admission to my black list. Once again nailed it, Annie!
My kinda journalism