Shock Pivot: WNBA Guard Sides With Sweeney

Person checking live soccer betting odds on a smartphone — Photo: Wpadington / Shutterstock

Sophie Cunningham told a mob of online critics to calm down about Sydney Sweeney’s racy gambling ad, even while admitting the campaign made her cringe.

Story Snapshot

Sydney Sweeney’s ad for gambling app Novig showed her nearly nude, covered only by sports equipment.
Female athletes and major outlets slammed the ad as sexist and demeaning to women’s sports.
WNBA star Sophie Cunningham called the ad “inauthentic” but refused to pile on Sweeney.
Cunningham argued the ad was never about women’s sports at all, just a betting pitch aimed at men.

The Ad That Set Off A Firestorm

Sydney Sweeney appeared in a campaign for the sports-betting app Novig wearing little to no clothing, with footballs and other gear strategically placed over her body. Reporters described her as “nude or minimally clad” while posing with sports equipment. The images spread fast online, and it did not take long for backlash to build across social media and sports circles.

Female athletes led the charge against the campaign. The Associated Press reported that many called the ad disrespectful, arguing it sexualized women in sports rather than celebrating them. The criticism spread across major outlets almost overnight, turning a single ad into a national conversation about how women are marketed in sports media.

Cunningham Speaks, But Not The Way Critics Expected

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham weighed in on her podcast, and her take surprised a lot of people. She called the ad “unauthentic,” questioning whether Sweeney even bets on sports herself. But instead of joining the outrage mob, Cunningham pushed back on the idea that women should be furious at Sweeney for taking the job.

Cunningham laid out her reasoning plainly. “Men. Sports. Naked women,” she said, before adding, “Morally, I think it’s kind of weird, but to each her own. Go do your thing, sis”. That is not a ringing endorsement of the ad’s taste, but it is also not the condemnation many expected from a fellow female athlete.

Why Are Girls Mad? The Question That Cut Through The Noise

Cunningham’s sharpest line landed like a splash of cold water on the controversy. “Why are girls mad?” she asked, insisting the ad was never meant to represent women’s sports in the first place. Her argument was simple: this was a gambling commercial built for a mostly male audience, not a statement about female athletes’ worth.

She did not stop at defending the concept. Cunningham also stuck up for Sweeney personally, saying, “I like her. She is beautiful. She is hot”. That kind of personal grace, even amid public criticism of the product, is the sort of common-sense fairness that gets buried when outrage cycles take over social media.

A Familiar Playbook In Sports Betting Marketing

Sexualized imagery in sports gambling ads is nothing new. Researchers have found that a large share of wagering advertisements lean on gender stereotypes and sexual appeal to grab attention, a pattern reporters noted stretches back decades. Novig’s chief executive even said Sweeney herself was “driving” the creative direction of the shoot, according to one report, suggesting she had a hand in shaping her own image rather than simply following orders.

That detail matters. If Sweeney helped steer the concept, the “victim of exploitation” framing pushed by some critics gets a lot shakier. Grown women making business decisions about their own image, even provocative ones, deserve the benefit of the doubt before strangers online decide they’ve been wronged.

Read "WNBA Star Sophie Cunningham Defends Sydney Sweeney After Controversial Ad" on SmartNews: https://t.co/H3T0FlgBDp #SmartNews They are just hating on her because she is good looking. It's a bunch of women hatter's who need to get over themselves.

— Gil espinoza (@Gilespinoza14) September 23, 2026

The Bigger Lesson In Cunningham’s Response

Cunningham’s real contribution was not defending the ad’s content. It was refusing to treat disagreement as a moral emergency. She said the quiet part out loud: you can think something is tacky and still believe the backlash against the woman who made it is overblown. That distinction used to be common sense. Now it counts as a bold take.

The controversy cost Sweeney real followers, with reports of losses topping 200,000 in a single week. Whether that reflects genuine offense or algorithm-driven pile-on is impossible to fully untangle. But Cunningham’s willingness to separate personal taste from public condemnation is exactly the kind of grounded thinking missing from most online outrage today.