Sydney Sweeney briefly lost hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram after starring in a Novig ad campaign. For the little-known prediction market the actress advertised, however, the controversy delivered something valuable: attention.
The "Euphoria” actress appeared mostly nude and covered her body with sporting equipment, such as footballs and a basketball hoop, in the Sept. 9 ad. The full 58-second spot has been viewed over 60 million times on Instagram, while versions on YouTube have millions of views themselves.
The ad has been criticized by athletes, including former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer and four-time Olympic gold medalist Ariarne Titmus, who commented on Instagram that it was an “absolute joke." Indiana Fever guard Sophie
Cunningham called it “unauthentic” on her “No Hesitation” podcast.
It's not the first time a Sweeney ad campaign has been embroiled in scandal. Last July, her ads for American Eagle also faced backlash.
Online furor over Novig’s ad picked up steam by Sept. 12, and Sweeney lost 137,000 followers Sept. 13 and another 66,000 Sept. 14, per social media analytics website Social Blade. At the end of the week, however, she gained all those followers back and then some. By Sept. 19, her account eclipsed 26 million followers and was up around 80,000 from before the ad’s release.
Novig's Instagram following rose sharply. Its account grew from 37,000 before the ad to 93,000 as of Sept. 22, a 151% increase.
On the Google search front, the attention spike was even more pronounced.
The company briefly eclipsed both Polymarket and Kalshi, two prediction market firms seen as competitors to Novig, in U.S. Google search interest.
Novig’s search interest took several days to pick up steam. It wasn’t until Sept. 14 that it reached its peak — five days after the ad’s launch.
Novig, which brands itself as "just sports," surpassed both Polymarket and Kalshi during a timespan that included the opening week of NFL season, which had its first full Sunday Sept. 13. Novig did not respond to a request for comment on how much its gains can be attributed to the Sweeney ad.
Despite increased attention surrounding the ad’s fallout, Novig is still relatively small in the prediction market space.
The company, which launched its prediction markets across the U.S. Aug. 4, generated roughly $317 million in notional trading volume from Sept. 10-16, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Novig data that replicated an earlier estimate from analytics firm Aldrin Research.
Meanwhile, Kalshi and Polymarket U.S. were in the billions. Kalshi’s volume sat at $13.6 billion for that period, while Polymarket’s recorded $1.9 billion.
Closer to Novig is DraftKings’ DKeX, a prediction market launched in June by the sportsbook, which traded around $415 million in volume from Sept. 10-16, and Rothera, which traded around $332 million.
Novig is also entering an industry that has faced repeated controversy.
Earlier this year, former U.S. Rep George Santos settled charges from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that he manipulated a Kalshi contract tied to whether he would attend President Trump’s State of the Union address. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported on what it called "deceptive" social-media marketing techniques by Polymarket. Meanwhile, this weekend, the New York Times covered DraftKings’ use of AI to target top-losing gamblers.
While this latest ad drew a fevered response across the sports world, it’s arguably smaller than the discourse generated by Sweeney’s campaign with American Eagle last year.
Her Wikipedia pageviews can be a rough measuring stick for that — in the aftermath of the American Eagle ad last year, her single-day pageviews peaked at 319,000. This month, her highest single-day total is less than half that at 143,000. (Both totals finish runners-up to her Saturday Night Live hosting gig in 2024, which saw her Wikipedia page receive 321,000 views in a single day.)
For a company that’s "just sports,” however, one result is clear: a lot more people now know the name Novig.
Methodology: USA TODAY reviewed data from Social Blade and Google Trends for the Instagram and search interest charts. An initial Novig trading-volume figure came from Aldrin Research via Covers.com. USA TODAY then independently calculated Sept. 10-16 notional volume using daily market data published by DraftKings DKeX, Kalshi, Novig, Polymarket U.S., Rothera and Underdog Exchange.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sydney Sweeney ad sparked online backlash. Novig's visibility exploded.
