A World Cup winner, a Great Britain Olympian and a Scotland centre answered the Novig campaign with clips of themselves playing. Sweeney answered them without a word.
Katherine Merchant watched the Sydney Sweeney advert for Novig and posted her own video. Clips of herself playing for club and for England, captioned “Sydney Sweeney does not represent women in sport”. She won the World Cup in the summer of 2014 and retired that September on medical advice, at 28, after 11 concussions.
Ellie Boatman, who played sevens for Great Britain at the Paris Olympics, went further: “this is what women’s sport actually looks like”. Scotland centre Evie Wills needed five words: “Strong & sweaty is beautiful”. And on Sunday Sweeney replied to all of them without writing a sentence. What she posted instead is below.
First, the advert. Do the players have a point, or is this a playful American campaign that rugby has taken too personally? Say which in the comments, then read on.
Novig posted it on Wednesday 9 September with the caption “Confirmed: Sydney Sweeney knows ball.” She wears nothing but the props: footballs, a tennis racket, a baseball, a hockey stick. There is no rugby ball in it. The rugby players objected anyway, and the reason is the whole argument.
Ellie Boatman: this is what women’s sport actually looks like
Boatman’s video went up on Instagram, and ITV News carried the words on Monday 14 September.
“Sorry what the actual heck is going on with that sports Ad, but hey Sydney this is what women’s sport actually looks like. We train and work hard to achieve what we have and we seriously don’t want sexualisation in sport to be the only way women are recognised. Many of us are super feminine, love to dress up and look good but we also want to be taken seriously as athletes too!!”
She has been a wing at Ealing Trailfinders for three seasons and a Great Britain sevens player since 2023, when European Games gold in Krakow qualified the team for Paris. They finished seventh there.
The third sentence is the one that matters. It answers the reply before anyone makes it. Nobody here is against looking good. The objection is to a betting company deciding that looking good is what “just sports” means when the subject is a woman.
Piper Logan, a Paris silver medallist on the wing for Canada, put it in four words: “It IS that deep.”
Katherine Merchant has argued this for years. Now she has an audience
Merchant scored 44 tries in 58 Tests on the England wing between 2005 and 2014, and played the 2010 and 2014 World Cups and the 2013 Sevens World Cup.
In the opening minutes against Samoa at the 2014 tournament she asked to come off because her head was not right. She told Rugby Wrap Up the following February: “I knew I was on borrowed time.”
She started the final on the right wing anyway, and England beat Canada 21-9 in Paris. Then, in September, the doctors ended her career.
So the woman telling Sweeney she does not represent women in sport played nine years of Test rugby before England’s women had full-time contracts. She stopped because of what the game did to her brain. Planet Rugby reported her TikTok on Monday and says she is now a fitness coach.
Five years ago she wrote on Instagram: “At the risk of being called ‘masculine’ I’m proud of my physique and want to encourage women that strength is still ‘feminine’.” The Novig campaign walked into a fight she had already picked.
Evie Wills: ten caps, two World Cups, and a nursing degree in between
Wills’s reply was the shortest of the three: “Strong & sweaty is beautiful”.
She is an inside centre, 1.63 metres and 75 kilograms on Scottish Rugby’s listing, with ten caps since her debut against Italy in April 2021.
She played the World Cup in New Zealand, lost the 2023-24 season to a knee ligament injury, and came back for the World Cup in England last year. She trained as a nurse while she did it. After a season at Sale Sharks she joined Glasgow Warriors this summer.
The American coverage of this story cannot see that part. In rugby, the women being told to be sexier are still, in many cases, working a second job.
Read also: Michelle Orange on women’s rugby pay and the players still working full-time jobs, from the Sale Sharks co-owner who put the £265,000 cap figure on the record.
Rugby also has a body argument no other women’s team sport has to make. A fifteen needs a 75-kilogram centre and a prop 30 kilograms heavier in the same photograph, doing different jobs, both of them the point. “Strong & sweaty” is shorthand for a team sheet.
What the Sydney Sweeney advert is selling, and what she said about it
Sweeney’s only words on the campaign came in Novig’s launch post on the Wednesday, where she is described as a strategic partner and equity holder.
“The campaign was about embracing a fun idea. The concept is simple: cut through the noise and put the focus entirely on sports. The campaign brings that idea to life with confidence, humor and a playful edge.”
Jacob Fortinsky, Novig’s co-founder and chief executive, said “Sydney helped bring that message to life in a way that’s impossible to ignore.” He was right about that part.
Novig went live on Tuesday 4 August as a sports prediction market, which British outlets have translated as betting company. Its pitch is that it trades only on sport, never politics or pop culture. Sweeney’s line in the video, “Novig is just sports”, is the product description.
| Figure | Number | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Novig’s average daily trading volume, week to 23 August | $23.3m | Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, reported by Covers |
| Salary cap for a whole Premiership Women’s Rugby squad, per season | £265,000 | Michelle Orange, For the Love of Rugby, August |
| Instagram followers Sweeney lost on Sunday and Monday | 200,000+ | Social Blade, reported by Consequence and Variety |
Then came Sunday 13 September. Four days into the backlash, Sweeney posted a run of Instagram Stories. Her own Novig image sat alongside ESPN Body Issue shoots of Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki, Myles Garrett, Rob Gronkowski, Karl-Anthony Towns and Jason Kelce.
The Body Issue ran every year from 2009 to 2019. No caption.
Where the ESPN comparison breaks, according to a world champion
The Stories were a real argument, so take it seriously. Serena Williams posed for ESPN. Megan Rapinoe posed for ESPN. If nudity was fine for them, why is it an insult now?
Skye Nicolson, a world champion boxer, answered it on Instagram, as reported by HuffPost UK: “There’s a big difference between looking ‘sexy’ because you do sport compared to [using] sex to sell ‘sport’.”
ESPN photographed athletes. The subject was their sport. Novig photographed an actress who owns a piece of the company, to sell a market.
Sophie Capewell, Olympic cycling gold medallist, captioned her gym and track sessions: “I’m sure you’ve seen Sydney Sweeney’s ad, but imagine a world where women are seen, for what they can do not just what they look like. It is cool to be an athlete, it is good to be strong.”
And Amy Hunt, fourth in the 200 metres in Budapest on Sunday, gave BBC Sport a post-race interview that began: “Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like.” Then: “21.4. Muscles. Hard work, blood, sweat, tears.”
Every one of them replied with footage of the work. So did Merchant, Boatman and Wills. A week of women’s sport posted its own highlights, unpaid, at a company that trades on the outcome of other people’s games. Nobody planned that. It is the best advert women’s rugby has had all year.
Read next:
– Why the cap is £265,000: the men’s side at Sale loses £8m a year, and the women’s budget sits inside that.
Your turn: fun idea, or the wrong body for the message?
Sweeney says it is a playful joke about a sports-only product, and ESPN did the same for a decade. Merchant, Boatman and Wills say a woman in a sports advert should look like a woman who plays sport, and that the joke costs them. Fun idea, or the wrong body for the message? Settle it below.
Frequently asked
What is the Sydney Sweeney advert for Novig?
A minute-long video for Novig’s “Just Sports” campaign, posted on Wednesday 9 September, in which Sweeney poses with sports equipment covering her body and says “Novig is just sports”. Novig is an American sports prediction market. Sweeney is a strategic partner and equity holder.
Which rugby players criticised the Sydney Sweeney advert?
Katherine Merchant, England’s 2014 World Cup winner, posted a TikTok of her career captioned “Sydney Sweeney does not represent women in sport”. Ellie Boatman, Great Britain sevens wing at Paris 2024, posted a video reply. Scotland centre Evie Wills wrote “Strong & sweaty is beautiful”.
How did Sydney Sweeney respond?
On Sunday 13 September she posted Instagram Stories placing her Novig image next to ESPN Body Issue shoots of Serena Williams, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird and six other athletes, with no caption. Her only statement is the Novig launch quote calling the campaign “a fun idea”.
