When Sydney Sweeney appeared nearly nude in a sports betting advertisement, she ignited a debate that has been smoldering beneath the surface of women's athletics for decades: who controls the image of women in sport, and at what cost. Sharon Stone, speaking from her own history of fighting for a place on a boys' golf team, framed the question as one of principle — that women's sports cannot be reduced to a lure for male gamblers. The athletes who trained for years to compete at the highest levels found themselves asking whether their sweat and sacrifice could survive being packaged alongside
Sharon Stone Criticizes Sydney Sweeney's Provocative Sports Ad
We can't denigrate women's sports to get men's attention
Mark
So what's actually at stake here? Is this about the ad itself, or about something bigger?
Mimi
Both, I think. The athletes who criticized it weren't objecting to nudity in general—some of them have posed nude themselves. They were saying the ad uses female bodies to sell gambling, and that's different from an athlete choosing to pose for a sports magazine.
Luke
But here's what we don't know: did Sweeney choose this role because she wanted to make a statement, or because she was paid well? The source doesn't tell us her reasoning. We're inferring.
Mimi
Fair. What we do know is that Stone and the athletes saw it as denigrating women's sports specifically. That's their actual complaint.
Mark
And Sweeney's response—the ESPN photos—does that answer them?
Luke
It complicates things. She's saying, "These celebrated athletes posed nude, so why is my choice wrong?" But the athletes' point was about context. A sports magazine celebrating athletic achievement is different from a betting ad.
Mimi
Exactly. And Stone's point was even narrower: don't use women's bodies to get men to gamble on sports. That's a specific harm she was naming.
Mark
Did anyone actually change their mind?
Luke
The source doesn't say. We have the initial criticism, Sweeney's response, and one commentator defending her. But no indication of whether the conversation moved anyone.
Mimi
Which is probably the real story—this became a culture war thing fast, and those don't resolve. They just get louder.
O Pulso
- A near-nude ad for a sports betting platform starring Sydney Sweeney drew immediate fire from female athletes who felt their sport had been used as a backdrop for sexualization rather than celebration.
- Sharon Stone escalated the tension publicly, insisting Sweeney bear personal responsibility for lending her image to a campaign that, in Stone's view, degrades the very foundation women athletes have fought to build.
- Olympic gold medalist Ariarne Titmus and British sprinter Amy Hunt took to social media to contrast the ad's imagery with the physical and emotional reality of elite athletic life — muscles, sacrifice, and years of labor.
- Sweeney fired back by circulating ESPN magazine's nude athlete spreads featuring Serena Williams and Ronda Rousey, reframing the debate around female agency and exposing the tension between empowerment and exploitation.
- Conservative commentators rushed to defend Sweeney, recasting the backlash as cultural jealousy and ideological overreach, ensuring the controversy spread far beyond sports into the wider arena of gender politics.
When Sydney Sweeney appeared nearly nude in a sports betting advertisement, she ignited a debate that has been smoldering beneath the surface of women's athletics for decades: who controls the image of women in sport, and at what cost. Sharon Stone, speaking from her own history of fighting for a place on a boys' golf team, framed the question as one of principle — that women's sports cannot be reduced to a lure for male gamblers. The athletes who trained for years to compete at the highest levels found themselves asking whether their sweat and sacrifice could survive being packaged alongside provocation.
Sydney Sweeney's commercial for Novig, a sports prediction platform, was designed to turn heads. It did — but the heads that turned belonged largely to people who were not pleased. The ad, which shows the actress nearly nude and posed with sports equipment, became an unexpected catalyst for a long-running argument about how women's bodies are used to sell things that have little to do with women's achievement.
Sharon Stone addressed the controversy at Variety's Power of Women event in Los Angeles, speaking with the authority of someone who once threatened legal action against her high school just to try out for the boys' golf team. She told People that Sweeney must take responsibility for the campaign, and she made clear her objection was not personal but principled: women's sports should not be cheapened to attract male gamblers.
The response from athletes was swift and pointed. Australian Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus expressed fury on Instagram, asking how the world still allows women's sport to be monetized through sexualization. British sprinter Amy Hunt offered a counter-image of what female athletes actually look like — defined by effort, not aesthetics.
Sweeney's rebuttal was to share ESPN magazine's celebrated nude athlete series, featuring Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, and others, implicitly asking why her choice was any different from theirs. The move shifted the conversation without quite resolving it, raising genuine questions about agency, double standards, and who holds the authority to define what counts as empowerment.
The debate quickly absorbed broader cultural fault lines. Some defended Sweeney as a target of ideological resentment; others saw the ad as evidence that women's sports remain vulnerable to being reduced to spectacle. The athletes who spoke out seemed most concerned with the latter. The ad remains online, and the question it raised — whether visibility through sexualization helps or harms women in sport — remains genuinely open.
Sydney Sweeney's latest commercial work has become the unlikely flashpoint in a debate about how women's bodies are used to sell sports betting. The ad for Novig, a sports prediction platform, shows the 29-year-old actress nearly nude, posing with sports equipment in positions designed to provoke. It was meant to be attention-grabbing. It succeeded, though not in the way the brand likely intended.
Sharon Stone, Sweeney's co-star on HBO's "Euphoria," spoke about the ad at Variety's Power of Women event in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The 68-year-old actress didn't mince words. She said Sweeney needs to "take responsibility" for the campaign, and she framed the issue not as a personal judgment but as a matter of principle: women's sports cannot be denigrated as a tool to get men to gamble. Stone drew on her own history to make the point—in high school, she had threatened legal action against her school to try out for the boys' golf team, because no girls' team existed. She made the team. "I had something to prove," she told People.
The backlash extended well beyond Stone. Ariarne Titmus, an Australian Olympic gold medalist swimmer, posted on Instagram that she felt "infuriated" watching the ad. She posed a direct question: "How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sport is still a thing?" Amy Hunt, a British sprinter who finished fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, offered a contrasting image of what women in sport actually look like: "Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears."
Sweeney's response was to share social media posts featuring nude photographs of female athletes from ESPN magazine—images of Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, and Caroline Wozniacki. The move was calculated to reframe the conversation: if these celebrated athletes had posed nude for a major sports publication, why was her own choice to bare her body for a commercial different? The question hung in the air without an obvious answer, and it shifted the terms of the debate.
Not everyone saw the criticism as justified. Curtis Houck, managing editor at Newsbusters, told Fox News Digital that the pile-on against Sweeney amounted to jealousy. He characterized Stone's comments as overwrought—comparing them to accusing Sweeney of a serious crime rather than simply starring in a provocative ad. He also suggested that Sweeney's willingness to defy what he called "the woke left" had made her a target. The comment revealed how thoroughly the incident had become entangled with broader cultural arguments about feminism, female agency, and who gets to decide what women should do with their own bodies and images.
What remains unresolved is whether the ad itself represents a genuine problem for women's sports or whether the objection to it reflects something else entirely—anxiety about female sexuality, disagreement about how women should present themselves, or legitimate concern that sexualization undermines efforts to build respect for women athletes. The athletes who spoke out seemed to be arguing the latter. Stone seemed to be arguing both. Sweeney's response suggested she saw the criticism as rooted in a double standard. The conversation continues, and the ad remains online.
Citações Notáveis
We can't denigrate women's sports to get men's attention so they can gamble.— Sharon Stone, speaking to People magazine
How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sport is still a thing?— Ariarne Titmus, Australian Olympic swimmer, on Instagram
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