Karen Duggan Critiques Controversial Betting Ad Featuring Sydney Sweeney

Karen Duggan has seen enough sports advertising to know a relic when she sees one.

The former Republic of Ireland international believes the uproar around Sydney Sweeney’s controversial betting advert has done something the campaign itself never managed: it has dragged the spotlight back onto the reality of women’s sport and the graft behind it.

Sweeney fronts a new ad for American betting company Novig, posing with minimal clothing and draped in sports equipment. It landed like a lead balloon among elite female athletes. Australian four-time Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus, American gymnast Gracie Kramer and British sprinter Amy Hunt all condemned it, with Hunt warning it risked becoming a “barrier” for young girls who might otherwise be drawn into sport.

Duggan’s verdict is blunt.

“In a way, I think we're nearly over-complicating it as a sports ad. I think it's silly,” she told RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland. “I think it uses an outdated formula of, you know, attractive women, sports imagery, and a bit of controversy to sell a product.”

She doesn’t see it as a reflection of women’s sport at all – and that, she says, is precisely the problem.

“My biggest criticism of it is that I don't think women were part of that conversation at all,” she said. “Sydney Sweeney doesn't represent me as a normal woman or as a female athlete in any way. I don't think it's an ad made by people trying to understand what it takes to be a female athlete and the discipline and the sacrifice and the competitiveness and the physicality that goes with that.”

Then she circles back to the same word.

“I think it's a silly ad. I think it's so outdated. But the response to me has been really, really interesting.”

Duggan sees a clear target audience: not sports fans in the stands, but a particular slice of the online betting market.

“I think it's largely just for men who consume sports through their phones, through social media, rather than even men who go out and engage in sports by going to the games, watching athletes, and appreciating what athletes do, both male and female.”

The ad might be stuck in the past, but the backlash is anything but. For Duggan, the anger has tapped into something that was already simmering.

“I feel like there's obviously been something bubbling under the surface where female athletes feel massively underrepresented in advertising, in social media, and under-celebrated. And I love how they've used this ad as a means to go out there and highlight how the female athlete thinks, how hard they work.”

Her own feed tells its own story.

“My algorithm isn't coming at me with loads of Sydney Sweeney propaganda. It's coming at me with the likes of Amy Hunt using her platform after a race to celebrate her competitors. So I think it's flipped the script a bit in a positive way. I think all the controversy that goes with the ad will dwindle away, but hopefully that this kind of movement to highlight female athletics will continue on for some time.”

Hunt has quickly become one of the central voices in that movement. Fresh from winning four gold medals at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest at the weekend, she aimed her message directly at the Hollywood star, posting: “this is what women in sport look like.”

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Hunt set out the stakes clearly.

“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,” she said.

She pointed to a stark number: 64% of young girls drop out of exercise and sport before they turn 16.

“We don’t need to place any kind of barrier whatsoever in their way in terms of providing the opportunity and the empowerment for them to still exercise, whatever that looks like, professional or kind of just going to do a park run with your friends.

“So it’s about empowering young girls and young women and young people to show that you really can just get out there and you don’t have to worry what you look like, you don’t have to worry about what you’re wearing.”

For Duggan, that collective message matters more than any single commercial.

“You don't want an advertising campaign to define the conversation around women,” she said. “We want the women to use their platforms now, use their own voices, celebrate each other's strength, athleticism, humour, ultimately real women. That's what's more powerful.”

She hopes brands are paying close attention to the “visceral reaction” from athletes and fans.

“I'm hoping that other companies are seeing the reaction, the kind of visceral reaction that women and athletes are having to this ad, and it kind of clicks with them, that this is what women want to see.”

If Novig want to chase a narrow band of male bettors scrolling on their phones, Duggan accepts that’s “their prerogative”. But she is crystal clear about where the wider industry should be heading.

“I think generally what companies should take from this is that we want to see strong, powerful women. I would react to Amy Hunt in a Nike ad far more than I'd react to Sydney Sweeney in a betting ad.”

The question now is simple: which version of women in sport will brands decide to back?