“Think you know sports? … Prove it.”
This is a line in Sydney Sweeney’s new ad campaign for the sports betting company Novig. The campaign has created such controversy and uproar among the women who have worked to secure their spots within the sports industry, and the response is justified because, at the end of the day, yes, it is “really that deep.”
For the people who have somehow not seen this ad in the last two weeks and are wondering what type of ad could cause this much of an issue, here is a debrief: Sweeney uses sports gear to cover as little as possible while posing sexually on things such as the top of a basketball hoop and in front of a hockey net, while making comments about how you should “prove you know sports” in a suggestive manner and tone of voice. These ads (yes, there were multiple ads in this style) created outrage almost instantly. In fact, I unfollowed her the day I saw the ad, along with an estimated 300,000 other people, as of the time this is written. Yet, a lot of people don’t understand why so many women in the sports industry have an issue with this ad.
According to NORC at the University of Chicago, only 23% of people follow women’s sports as closely as men’s league sports. Women’s sports also don’t receive as much coverage as men’s sports, often being shown on secondary channels or not receiving as much funding. These athletes feel that Sweeney’s ad undermined and undervalued the amount of training and dedication that goes into being a professional athlete as a woman. But it’s not only the athletes who are upset about this ad campaign; it’s also the women who work in the industry. This is also the group I fall into, and why I’m so passionate about the damaging effects of this campaign.
If you ask the majority of women who work in the sports industry what they think of the ad, they’ll all say the same thing: that the ad dehumanizes and sexualizes them and the work they put in to get where they are in the industry, and that, yes, they do know sports, and that is what makes the ad so much worse. It’s common for women who work in sports to express that they have had to work harder to prove themselves compared to their male counterparts. It’s common enough for women to be sexualized in male-dominated fields in general, and this ad almost encourages it, as the only thing memorable about it is the fact that she is practically naked. Many have already seen the effects of this ad, asking why can’t they dress like Sweeney, or being told the ad is not that deep and she is not insulting women in the sports industry; that they are being “sensitive” and that others have been doing this for ages.
I personally agree with the common opinion of the ad, as within 12 hours of it going public, almost all of my friends asked me if I saw it and what I thought about it as someone who wants to work in the sports industry, and I think that they could have done it completely differently. Using the phrase “You think you know sports? … Prove it” as something to empower women showing off their accomplishments, with the Winter Olympics this past year, along with there being many developments within the women’s sports industry in general, is just a slap in the face to those who have worked so hard to gain their place in this world.