Sophie Cunningham: The WNBA world is overreacting to Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad

WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham isn’t buying the outrage aimed at Sydney Sweeney over her nearly nude ad campaign for sports prediction-market platform Novig, telling listeners of her podcast that the backlash from fellow female athletes has been badly overblown.

“Why are girls mad?” Ms. Cunningham asked on the latest episode of her “No Hesitation” podcast. “That is literally what she does. Why is anyone mad? It is a gambling ad: men, sports, naked women. Of course, that’s going to draw attention.”

The Indiana Fever guard added a caveat — “Do I agree with it? Morally, I think it’s kind of weird” — before landing on her real point: “each to their own. Go do your thing, sis.”

Ms. Sweeney’s campaign, which features her posing nude behind strategically placed footballs and other sports equipment under Novig’s “Just Sports” branding, has drawn a wave of criticism from women in sports who argue it undercuts years of work to be taken seriously as athletes rather than as bodies. Olympic swimmer Ariarne Titmus and British sprinter Amy Hunt were among the most vocal critics, with Ms. Hunt telling “Good Morning Britain” that “when we’re trying to provide role models for young people and young women in sport, we really want to show that it’s about what your body can do, not so much what it looks like.”

Ms. Cunningham sees it differently. She argued the ad was never aimed at women’s sports in the first place — it was built for sports bettors, a group her podcast co-host Drew Hanlen pegged at roughly 75% male. That reading lines up with what Novig CEO Jacob Fortinsky has said publicly: that Ms. Sweeney drove the creative direction herself and that the company “never intended to portray female sports.”

Ms. Sweeney herself has leaned into the defense rather than back away from it. After the ad drew heat, she fired back at critics by posting a string of ESPN magazine covers on Instagram showing athletes — Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Megan Rapinoe, Caroline Wozniacki and Rob Gronkowski among them — who had posed nude for the publication in years past.

Ms. Cunningham, for her part, wasn’t interested in piling on.

“I can understand when you first see that ad that like it could kind of deflate women, because it’s like we’ve worked so hard to get a little bit of respect around here,” she said. “But when you really think about it, it’s like, screw it, let that girl do her thing. This has nothing to do with us.”

She closed her take on an upbeat note about the state of women’s sports generally: “I’m really loving seeing all these girls who are powerful, strong, showing young girls what it looks like to be an athlete. I don’t think the ad was coming for women in sports.”