Another insult to female athletes

It doesn't somehow make it better that it's aimed at men betting on sports! It's so regressive that we are still advertising things in this way. Back to Sun page 3 days.

I also have big boobs, by the way, it doesn't make this kind of advertising any more palatable to me.

Excellent advertising campaign, never heard of the company or the product until they created this ragebait advert. The outrage is giving this company the oxygen they craved. All too easy.

It was more the total hate on her for having big boobs I was referring too. She got it way before this campaign. Maybe it’s just made her think if everyone is going to go on about my boobs may as well use them.

If thats the lens you choose to look at this through, then yeah, ragebait, easy, cheap... use the tired old trope of the objectified woman, and shrug off your* contribution to misogyny and the demeaning of women, and womens sports and any other female achievements by association.
The thing is it's not very clever is it? It's like doing a bad cover version of a song that was boring to begin with. No need to think for themselves, to try something new, or god forbid, portray sporting women as the whole people they are, or female sporting competition as exciting and worthy in its right. No need to challenge anyones thinking.
Why bother when you can just appeal to the rising penis, the god which we must all sacrifice to.
Womens bodies are used to sell so much, we really all should get royalty payments for our copyright.

*not yours personally of course, but the company and the agency that created this slop

I don't think anyone's looking at her face 😅👀

It's a concept as old as time. Look at Sharron Davies' old photoshoots. She was posing in fetish wear!

Given it's advertising for a sleazy sports 'prediction market', aka gambling, it makes sense they'd do a sleazy advertising campaign. A successful campaign too - it's ragebait, and all the expected outrage is just amplifying it massively, as the company wants.

To be fair, she's not pretending to be an athlete, she's just doing glamour shots with sports equipment. I always wonder what it is that seems so appealing about her though - actresses with great figures are a dime a dozen, and she's rather odd looking in the face. Is it just that she's marketed herself as a sexualised object?

Another side to this.

I can’t help feeling it would have been cooler for women’s sport to simply not even mention the naked gambling ad at all. And, if it had to, maybe focus on the gambling bit rather than the woman advertising it. I haven’t definitively run the numbers on this, but instinct tells me that gambling wrecks a lot more lives than Sydney Sweeney.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/15/sydney-sweeney-sports-betting-ad

I thought semi-naked women being used to sell things went out in 1978. What the hell is wrong with the marketing company, and also with Sydney Sweeney for doing this?

All this controversy is driving interest to a the sports betting company that I'd previously never heard of ... their marketing team has played a blinder

Unless I have missed something, this is an add for a sports betting company where probably men make up at least three quarters of customer base. Sydney Sweeney, from what I can tell, has not made out she is a sportswomen in any form, just advertising a sports betting company by holding lots of sports kit naked. Most actors/celebs who advertise services are rarely mistaken for an expert in the subject they are advertising.

p.s. Sports women (and men!) have been stripping for glamour shoots for years for money.

Soft porn is glamour now.

I can recommend going to women's T20 cricket matches. They badly need the support, tickets are about a tenner and they're great fun. Not very long either. Seriously, a fab half-day out. Equality of coaching has finally been achieved, now we have to fight to keep it - records are being broken every month now we have that coaching.

Achieves more than complaining about trans people, who can't even run in a park without being targeted and have already (all few dozen of them) been banned from even grassroots sports.

Aimee-Ffion Edwards is one of many women who played rugby with blokes growing up - but trans kids have no sporting outlet at all. Even playing football with their mates at the lowest level. When exactly will you have punished them enough?

Trans kids can play all sport at grass roots level and there's nothing stopping any trans person from playing unisex sports and events.

Trans kids cannot and should not play single-sex sport against their biologically/genetically opposite sex.

Not sure why you're referencing a female playing rugby with males (up until the age of 14), that's very different to a biological male wanting to partake in female sport.

When exactly will you have punished them enough?

Exaggerate much! stop with the drama llama mythomania, the gender confused are not excluded, they just can't play in the category they're not eligible to play in.

Oh the drama. No, girls cannot be sacrificed (and risk injury and worse) in order to make sad boys happy. Other opportunities will have to be created.

Ffs.

So have been listening to the outrage about this on Irish radio for the the last day or two. Yet there wasn't a dickie bird about the bikini topped ring girl performing at Kate Taylor's recent fairwell bout in Dublin. An actual women's sporting event, in front of 80,000 with millions more watching live at home. Surely that's more damaging to the perception of women in sport (and life) than an actress in an ad for a betting company? Smells a little of imported American culture wars to me.

Agree with a couple of PPs who’ve pointed out that the ragebait ad did exactly what it was intended to and brought far more publicity for the betting firm than they’d ever have got from a more respectful ad.

It’s also worth pointing out that Sweeney is a stakeholder in the betting company too, so knew exactly what she was doing here. She will be profiting from it in more ways than just her immediate ad fee and the personal popularity / notoriety that’s come with it.

I suspect she’s laughing, (at us all), all the way to the bank.

Apparently Sydney Sweeney has lost 200,000 followers since this ad, which I find interesting.

It’s just another example of the hyper sexualised way that women are used for marketing. And I don’t think it’s surprising to find that objectionable, even if it is commonplace.

Female competitors across all sports have often had to fight to be taken seriously as athletes. And that’s why adverts like this and the Dylan Mulvaney tripe are so harmful; they both make a mockery of actual female athletes (albeit in different ways).

Saying it’s fine because boobs sell betting adverts is no different than saying Page 3 sells newspapers. If we had a fully naked man sat legs akimbo, dangling his dick into a basketball net, there would at least be some parity - but we don’t because women are always the ones to be paraded like a sex object.

The only thing I’m slightly finding hypocritical is Amy Hunt criticising the advert when she opts to compete in full make up and often jewellery. I’m an avid sports fan and I have often wondered why the hell female athletes slather on a full face of makeup when they’re going to be getting hot and sweaty. It feels as if it just perpetuates the notion that women must look pretty at all times. And that idea is adjacent to Sydney Sweeney portraying female athletes as sexy. I’m happy for someone to explain why my logic is flawed here as I’m not sure if I’m missing something obvious (autistic). It has always just grated on me that even when doing heavy, sweaty exercise, women feel as if they must ensure they are sexy and attractive. (Don’t even start me on the athletes wearing the sports outfits that disappear right up their arse crack when other fellow female competitors are wearing the much more practical shorts!)