Consumers on Sydney Sweeney x Novig: Winning men, losing women

Sydney Sweeney's campaign for sports betting platform Novig has generated tens of millions of views and significant media attention, drawing criticism from female athletes and sparking debate about gender representation.

Zappi surveyed a nationally representative panel of 200 U.S. online gamblers, split evenly between men and women. All of which currently use gambling websites or apps. This gives us a view from consumers already active in the category.

The data tells a more nuanced story than the headlines suggest.

The ad lands much better with men

The provocation in Novig's campaign is deliberate. Sweeney appears nude or scantily clad alongside sports equipment, in creative designed to generate attention and drive adoption among male sports bettors.

Among men, that approach largely landed.

• 73.4% of men said the ad made them more likely to choose Novig
• 69.2% reacted positively to the level of nudity
• 62.7% felt positively about how women were portrayed

Backlash aside, the provocative execution clearly resonated more strongly with men.

But the gender divide has real commercial implications

The picture looks very different among women. And that matters, because women now make up approximately 26% of online sports bettors, a fast-growing segment that every brand in this space is actively trying to win.

• 32.8% of women said the ad made them less likely to choose Novig, versus just 8.4% of men
• 42.0% of women said the ad made them more likely to choose Novig, versus 73.4% of men
• 46.5% of women reacted negatively to the level of nudity, versus 12.6% of men
• 45.5% of women felt negatively about the portrayal of women, versus 15.4% of men
• 56.1% of women said there was something people could find offensive, unpleasant or disturbing about it, compared with 35.1% of men

One consumer put it plainly:

"This ad was a turn off for me. It was definitely geared to men."

The issue is the execution, not the celebrity

Despite the backlash, consumers broadly did not see Sweeney herself as damaging to the brand. Overall, 60.4% of respondents said her involvement was likely to have a positive impact on the brand, versus just 17.6% who expected a negative impact. Among men, that rose to 77.1% positive. And even among women, positive expectations for Sweeney's involvement outweighed negative ones.

But that doesn’t mean the creative is working particularly well. The ad delivered average Sales Impact but weak Brand Impact, suggesting Sweeney and the provocative execution may be commanding more attention than Novig itself.

That’s the danger of pairing marquee talent with a deliberately polarizing concept: the controversy can eclipse the brand. Novig gets the attention, but risks becoming the second thing consumers notice — and remember.

The divide isn't about Novig's proposition

It’s not all backlash for Novig. One message came through clearly: only sports. That proposition, relative to prediction markets more broadly, is a positive takeaway for the brand.

61.3% of all respondents felt positively about Novig's sports-only focus, versus just 12.5% negatively. Even among women, positive sentiment (50.6%) outweighed negative sentiment (16.6%) by more than three to one.

Women aren’t rejecting the proposition – just the way it was marketed.

Creative testing can expose that trade-off before launch. Knowing it afterward is just expensive learning.