Sydney Sweeney’s ad puts a risky new industry in the spotlight
Actress Sydney Sweeney knew exactly what she was doing when she posed semi-naked for an American sports prediction platform, drawing widespread condemnation from female athletes. So did Novig, the company behind the salacious advertisement, practically unknown before deliberately launching itself into the middle of a social media outrage cycle.
Sweeney and Novig are a perfect match. The actress has distracted from a promising Hollywood career and immense mainstream popularity with a campaign that is designed to spark outrage. Her 2025 campaign for budget outfitter American Eagle, which highlighted her “great jeans”, was accused of promoting eugenics, and generated considerable social media backlash.
Now, she has emerged as the latest public face of a growing industry that has flourished by skirting the outer limits of taste and operating in a gap in the law.
“Sydney first came to us as an investor with an interest in prediction markets,” Novig’s co-founder and chief executive Jacob Fortinsky wrote on LinkedIn last week.
“She’s now also a strategic partner who helped shape the creative and served as the face of our first major brand campaign.”
It’s no surprise that Novig’s latest viral ad was launched to coincide with the start of the National Football League’s season. After the American Eagle spot, Sweeney is clearly advertising catnip for a particular type of red-blooded Middle American male, the type who drives a truck, drinks beer, voted for Trump at least once. He watches College Football and UFC, not Euphoria.
He’s also the type of guy to get around prediction markets, effectively online platforms that allow users to buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future events as varied as the winner of the World Cup final, to when Donald Trump will launch his next airstrike against Iran. Over the past two years, the biggest players in the space, Kalshi and Polymarket, now respectively valued at $US40 billion ($56 billion) and $US21 billion ($29 billion), have soared in popularity and become major cultural forces in the United States, first bursting onto the scene during the 2024 US presidential election.
If you think these platforms look like gambling with another name, you’d be right. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then a duck it probably is. But so much savvy innovation is finding novel ways to disguise your duck as a goose.
Such is the case for prediction markets in the United States, where they are legal under federal law because they are considered financial exchange services, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as contract markets. Because users bet against each other, rather than “the house”, companies like Kalshi say they are not operating casinos.
Here in Australia, those companies are treated as illegal unlicensed offshore gambling platforms, with local access restricted. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has warned that punters who use them won’t have local consumer protections. Despite all the warnings, local trading firm FEX Global is seeking to become Australia’s first regulated prediction market.
But regardless of those regulatory distinctions, the line between prediction markets and betting appears practically cosmetic. Ahead of July’s World Cup Final, a record $US5.69 billion ($8 billion) in betting activity was made, purely through prediction markets. It’s not gambling though!
While online sports betting brings a host of policy challenges around addiction and exploitation, prediction markets open up plenty more risks around insider trading. In April, an American solider involved in the capture of Venezuelan pesident Nicolas Maduro pleaded not guilty to fraud charges after placing wagers on Polymarket about the military action, and earning over $US400,000. Disgraced former US congressman George Santos was banned from Kalshi and forced to cough up over $70,000 for allegedly betting on himself not turning up to Trump’s State of the Union address.
Like Tab and Sportsbet in Australia, which have become incredibly commercially entwined with our local footy codes and media companies, prediction markets have quickly woven themselves into the fabric of American sporting culture.
Polymarket has a commercial arrangement with Major League Baseball, while Novig, the company behind the viral ad, recently became the official prediction partner of the New York Mets, one of dozens of MLB franchises to cut a similar deal.
While the industry is increasingly in the crosshairs of regulators and traditional casino operators who want them subject to the same tax treatment, there are plenty of high-profile backers. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s son, is an investor and strategic advisor for Kalshi. Novig, co-founded by Harvard graduate Fortinsky, has raced to a $500 million valuation, and is backed by storied Silicon Valley startup accelarator Y Combinator.
The products offered by these companies might appear deeply unserious, and potentially risky. The money and power behind them is not.
The Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.
Kishor Napier-Raman is a senior business writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously he worked as a CBD columnist and reporter in the federal parliamentary press gallery.Connect via X or email.