Karen Duggan has seen enough sports marketing to know when an old playbook is being dusted off.
The former Republic of Ireland international looked at Sydney Sweeney’s much-discussed advert for US betting company Novig – the Hollywood star almost naked, draped in sports equipment – and saw nothing new. But she has seen something powerful in what came next.
“The response,” she said, “has flipped the script in a positive way.”
The advert has been hammered across women’s sport. Four-time Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus, American gymnast Gracie Kramer and British sprinter Amy Hunt are among those who have publicly condemned it. Hunt, fresh from four gold medals at the World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, warned the campaign risks becoming a “barrier” to young girls even wanting to play sport.
Duggan, speaking on RTÉ Radio 1’s Morning Ireland, did not waste time dressing it up.
“In a way, I think we're nearly over-complicating it as a sports ad. I think it's silly,” she said. “It uses an outdated formula of attractive women, sports imagery and a bit of controversy to sell a product. I don't think it was ever intended to represent female athletes or women in sport or the reality of that.”
Her sharpest criticism cut to who was – and wasn’t – in the room when the idea was signed off.
“My biggest criticism of it is that I don't think women were part of that conversation at all. 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 said it again, almost for emphasis: “I think it's a silly ad. I think it's so outdated. But the response to me has been really, really interesting.”
For Duggan, the target audience is obvious – and it’s not fans who actually live and breathe sport in stadiums.
“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.”
If the advert itself felt tired, what followed did not. It lit a fuse.
“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,” Duggan said. “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 the 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 this kind of movement to highlight female athletics will continue on for some time.”
Hunt has become a central figure in that movement. After her golden weekend in Budapest, she directed a pointed message at Sweeney: “This is what women in sport look like.”
Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Hunt widened the lens to the next generation.
“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.
The numbers back up her concern. With 64% of young girls dropping out of exercise and sport before the age of 16, she argued, the last thing they need is another obstacle.
“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,” Hunt said. “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.”
Duggan’s focus is on making sure the conversation doesn’t get hijacked by a single piece of marketing.
“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 the industry is paying close attention to the backlash – and to what it reveals.
“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,” she said.
Novig, Duggan accepts, may be content chasing a narrow slice of the market.
“If you're a company like Novig, and you're solely focused on a certain cohort of men – like I said, I think it's just a cohort of men who consume sports through their phones or through betting and in that way – that's their prerogative.”
But she is clear about where the real opportunity lies.
“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 message from athletes is blunt, united and impossible to miss: if brands want to sell sport to the next generation, they need to start by showing what sport actually looks like.
