Putting “sports” before “betting” doesn’t turn gambling into sport. Gambling companies sell bets, not sport events. This separation means a lot in the debate around Sydney Sweeney’s campaign for Novig. The advertisement has received criticism from female athletes over its sexualised use of sporting imagery. Their objections are understandable. But building the entire conversation on whether one actress has let women down risks leaving something important behind the curtains.
I would like to widen the frame of this situation using a critical social psychology perspective and invite you to think: who gets blamed, who makes decisions, and who benefits from the argument?
When betting is repeatedly marketed alongside your sport team’s name and is associated with a match-day excitement, placing a bet can begin to look like a normal behaviour of being a fan. In social psychology, normalisation describes how something comes to feel ordinary, expected or simply part of life. A study of 85 sports betting advertisements identified appeals to friendship, sporting rituals, status, risk, sexualised imagery and power. The researchers interpreted the advertising as clearly targeting young male sports fans. This was an Australian study published in 2016, not an analysis of Novig, but it helps explain the commercial language this campaign enters.
I believe this ad addresses a familiar imagined customer: a man with money to spend, desires to satisfy and an appetite for risk (that is an image the advertisement offers, not a description of every man who bets). The marketing goal of such advertisement often is to create an illusion for that man to see himself as someone who understands the game, makes important decisions in betting for the right team and overall is an important part of the whole thing. The sexualised woman enhances that imagined world of ego, sexualised energy, pleasure and success.
Nobody has to promise that a woman literally comes with a winning bet. The association works through the scene: money, excitement, desirability and winning placed together.
Men as players. Women as prizes.
Sydney’s visibility makes her an easy centre for the argument.
We can identify her, address her and judge her.
The gambling industry is harder to confront.
While we are mad at Sydney, while women are against women again, who is benefiting? If our concern is women’s dignity, we shouldn’t stop with Sydney, we should look beyond these campaigns and towards the young women working in the industry, let’s say at live online casino tables: How are their jobs designed? Who decides what they wear? How much control do they have over their presentation? What happens if a customer sexualises or abuses them? Does the marketing invite viewers to treat them as another attraction?
Research on women casino dealers has examined sexualised working environments and vulnerability to harassment. It does not expose the conditions at every online studio, but it gives us good reason to question working conditions rather than stop at an image.
Now replace Sydney Sweeney with an AI-generated woman
Imagine the same poses, sporting props and invitation to bet. But it’s not a real woman, it’s a good AI replacement. Would the criticism disappear because there was no actress to hold responsible? If the problem still remains after removing the celebrity, then the celebrity cannot be its entire cause. And if our interest disappears once there is no famous woman to judge, then maybe we for whatever reason don’t like Sydney (doesn’t really look like she’d care to please us either)?…
I am not trying to say that individual responsibility doesn’t exist. A woman can choose a campaign and an angle of representation. But not everyone thinks alike, even on the important questions. Deal with it. However, would we blame an AI woman if there were one instead of Sydney, or would we finally start looking at what’s behind this campaign?
Would we then ask why businesses continue to find this fantasy commercially attractive?
The feministic argument itself can become part of the campaign
Gambling advertising same as tabacco and alcohol faces restrictions in different jurisdictions. Italy’s regulator, AGCOM, explicitly reminds influencers that gambling advertising prohibitions apply to their content. The UK CAP Code prohibits gambling marketing from linking gambling with seduction, sexual success or increased attractiveness. These are jurisdiction-specific examples, not a finding that this US campaign breaches either framework.
Now in countries where gambling advertisement is restricted public reaction makes an advertisement possible. Someone reposts it in disgust. Someone else defends it. A commentator responds. A news outlet covers the disagreement. People who would never purposely watch a betting ad will do this time, intrigued by a debate about women.
Research by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman found that emotionally activating content, including content evoking anger (rage bait), is more likely to be shared. Could provocation be a calculated marketing move? Yes. The cynical calculation here could be that the people offended are less commercially valuable than the people attracted, and that the disagreement will bring both groups’ attention.
Within that logic, feminist objections might even be showed as women trying to spoil men’s fun. This reaction can generate even more attraction as a small performance of defiance.
That is a possible marketing logic, I’m not stating, just discussing.
We should question that possibility without pretending women never gamble, that women all oppose gambling, or that other marginalised groups are somehow protected from commercial provocation. The important part here is whose emotions Novig believes can afford to disregard.
Female athletes can challenge the use of sporting imagery. Female employees in igaming can question how they are presented and protected. Audiences can scrutinise the company and its commercial choices without repeatedly circulating the entire advert.
Sydney is the face you recognise. The business can replace her. Instead of looking at the famous face, we should be looking and question the business who is selling gambling through an old patriarchal fantasy: men as players, women as prizes.
