Amanda Platell Defends Sydney Sweeney but Ignores What Female Athletes Are Actually Saying

Amanda Platell wants you to believe that the women criticizing Sydney Sweeney’s Novig ad are just jealous. In her Daily Mail column defending the actress, Platell paints the athletic sisterhood as bitter, snobby, and hypocritical, women who can’t stand that a pretty actress is getting attention.

It’s a convenient narrative. It’s also completely wrong. Let’s address Platell’s central argument: that Sweeney’s critics are motivated by envy because she’s successful, beautiful, and rich. This is the same tired defense trotted out every time a woman gets criticized for something genuinely worthy of criticism. “You’re just jealous” is not an argument. It’s a deflection

Yes she’s naked, yes she’s mucking about with a football, a basketball, a tennis ball, even a snooker ball – but the only sport she’s having is enjoying a good laugh at the men who waste their money on betting apps.
Why on earth is the athletic sisterhood so bothered? It simply couldn’t resist a pile-on could it, with the Aussie Olympian swimmer Ariarne Titmus incandescent and saying of the ad: ‘I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this.

Daily Mail

The actual issue with Sweeney’s Novig ad isn’t that she’s naked. It’s why she’s naked. Platell glosses over this entirely. The ad isn’t celebrating athleticism. It isn’t showcasing the incredible physiques of professional athletes who’ve dedicated their lives to their sport. It’s a softcore porn ad for a gambling app, a gambling app that Sweeney has an equity stake in.

Platell compares this to ESPN’s The Body Issue, where athletes posed nude to celebrate their athletic achievements. But The Body Issue was not primarily designed as sexual advertising. Its stated editorial purpose was to showcase athletes’ bodies, strength and physical diversity

It wasn’t selling gambling. It wasn’t designed to attract attention through an overtly sexualised portrayal of a woman while promoting gambling. The comparison isn’t just wrong; it’s insulting to every athlete who participated in that project.

Platell also dismisses the criticism from Olympians like Ariarne Titmus and Amy Hunt as “pious” and “snobby.” But these women aren’t claiming moral superiority. They’re pointing out a simple truth: they’ve spent their entire lives training, sacrificing, and competing. They’ve built bodies that are tools for their sport. And then a Hollywood actress comes along, strips naked, bounces around with a basketball, and suddenly she’s the face of “sports.”

Confirmed: Sydney Sweeney knows ball. pic.twitter.com/EXQ4PzVZsi

— Novig (@Novig) September 9, 2026

Platell’s most disingenuous move, however, is framing this as a feminist issue. She invokes “a woman’s right to choose” as if Sweeney’s decision to appear naked in a gambling ad is some kind of empowerment. But feminism isn’t just about doing whatever you want. It’s about examining why you want it and who benefits. Sweeney isn’t reclaiming her sexuality. She is monetising her sexuality to promote an industry already facing serious scrutiny over addiction, aggressive marketing and the financial harm gambling can cause.

And there is another layer Platell ignores. Novig’s slogan promises “no politics” because, unlike some prediction markets, it focuses exclusively on sports. But coming from Sweeney, whose advertising campaigns have repeatedly become culture-war flashpoints, that language inevitably carries additional cultural baggage. Whether Novig intended that resonance or not, the campaign speaks directly to a heavily male-coded vision of sports culture built around gambling, sex appeal and the promise of escaping everything supposedly “political.”

Platell calls Sweeney a “sassy, skilled businesswoman.” But there’s nothing skilful about exploiting your body for profit while pretending it’s empowerment. There’s nothing sassy about aligning yourself with forces that make the world worse for women. The female athletes criticizing Sweeney aren’t jealous. They’re disgusted. And they have every right to be.

Sweeney may be making very good money from this strategy now. But building a public brand around provocation and the male gaze carries its own limitations. The same culture that rewards women for fitting a narrow fantasy is notoriously unforgiving when they stop fitting it. That is precisely why female athletes are entitled to question whether recycling those standards represents progress at all.