September 23, 2026
Prediction-market challenger Novig's "Just Sports" campaign with Sydney Sweeney has grabbed more attention than most operators could buy — along with a sharp backlash from female athletes. Former Paddy Power and William Hill communications executive Tony Kenny says the hard part starts now: turning viral views into funded accounts, and a controversy into a brand people remember.
Measured purely by how many people are talking about it, Novig has already had the best marketing month of any prediction-market brand this year. Its "Just Sports" campaign starring actor Sydney Sweeney has travelled far beyond the betting world, into sports pages, social feeds and coverage from outlets including the BBC and the New York Times.
Whether that attention ever turns into customers is a different question. Speaking to iGaming Business, Tony Kenny — formerly head of sponsorship and PR at William Hill and a senior communications figure at Paddy Power — argues that the campaign has won the easy stage, and the difficult one is only beginning.
Brand: Novig, a US prediction-market challenger
Campaign: "Just Sports", launched ahead of the new NFL season
Star: Sydney Sweeney — who reportedly approached Novig herself and is now an equity holder
The pitch: sports contracts only — no political, war or death markets
The backlash: female athletes accused the ads of reducing women in sport to sexual display
Novig's response: CEO Jacob Fortinsky says the company is "hugely supportive" of women's sport
The open question: how many viewers became registered, funded, returning customers
A joke with a point — and a problem
The ads show Sweeney naked or barely clothed, with footballs, boxing gloves and other kit placed to keep things just about decent. The gag underneath is a product claim: Novig offers just sports, positioning itself against rivals that list contracts on elections, conflicts and even deaths. Sweeney was closely involved in shaping the concept and has said it was fun and fitted her own love of sport.
The imagery also provoked a fierce response from women in sport. Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer posted footage of herself competing, captioned to the effect that this is what a woman in sports looks like. British sprinter Amy Hunt, Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus and water polo player Tilly Kearns added their criticism, while rugby international Sofie Fella asked why the money was not going into women's sport instead. The broader complaint: campaigns like this undercut years of effort to have female athletes judged on performance rather than looks.
Fortinsky's defence was that Sweeney was never meant to represent female athletes. Sweeney herself pointed to earlier nude photoshoots featuring elite sportswomen.
Views are cheap. Deposits are not.
Kenny's central point is about the size of the ask. Liking, sharing or arguing about an ad costs nothing. Opening a prediction-market account means handing over ID, depositing real money and learning how event contracts work — a much bigger step than the ad itself explains.
He draws a comparison with Sweeney's earlier campaign for American Eagle. See a celebrity in a pair of jeans and the next step is obvious: buy the jeans. See her surrounded by sports equipment and there is no equally direct line to "fund an account and trade a contract". As Kenny puts it, this is not a free trial — people are putting in their own money, and that is a stretch for any gambling brand.
Novig can see the traffic arriving through its own links, but outsiders cannot. There is no public data yet on how many campaign-driven downloads turned into registrations, how many of those were funded, or how many users came back after a first trade. And any uplift is tangled up with the natural surge that arrives every year with the start of the NFL season.
Everyone knows Sweeney. Fewer know Novig.
The bigger risk, in Kenny's view, is that the controversy is more memorable than the company. Novig now has attention, awareness and some name recall — but it has to decide what it wants that name to stand for. With Sweeney as an equity partner, does she remain the face of the brand, or does the company change course?
The name does not help. Seasoned bettors will read "Novig" as "no vig" — trading without a traditional bookmaker's built-in margin — but a mainstream audience drawn in by a viral ad is unlikely to make that connection unprompted.
The vig (short for vigorish) is the margin a bookmaker builds into its odds so that it profits regardless of the result. Exchange-style and prediction-market platforms typically make money through fees or spreads instead — which is the promise packed into Novig's name.
The Paddy Power lesson
Kenny knows provocative marketing from the inside. At Paddy Power, outrageous stunts worked because irreverence was part of the brand's DNA: it had a consistent voice, and its customers knew they were in on the joke. Borrow the same tactics without that foundation, he warns, and the result can feel forced.
Novig could try to play a similar role in US prediction markets — the cheeky outsider next to comparatively buttoned-up rivals such as Kalshi and Polymarket. But sustaining that personality across a market as big and varied as the United States is a long-term commitment, not a single campaign.
- Repeat the trick and each new provocation lands with less force.
- Change direction too fast and the ad stays famous while the brand behind it fades.
- Go quiet and, as Kenny suggests, it becomes a non-story within a week.
Novig has proved it can own a news cycle and out-shout far bigger competitors. It has not yet proved that the people who watched understand what it sells, remember its name or want to become customers. Sex may well sell — the open question is whether it sells sports prediction contracts, or just Sydney Sweeney.
Quotes from Tony Kenny were originally given to iGaming Business. The image above is an AI-generated illustration. Prediction markets and sports betting involve financial risk and aren't for everyone — please play responsibly, set your limits, and if it stops being fun, take a break.
