A new sports betting campaign built around Sydney Sweeney has drawn sharp backlash from professional athletes, who say the ads put them in an uncomfortable position without their consent.
The campaign comes from a prediction market company that has been pushing aggressively into mainstream sports advertising. Sweeney, one of the most recognizable actors of her generation, appears in promotional material that critics describe as bordering on nudity — imagery that has now been attached to a betting product.
Athletes across multiple leagues have spoken out. Their complaint is not simply about the content of the ads. It is about being implicitly associated with them. Several pointed out that teams and leagues have spent years negotiating strict rules about how gambling companies can use their names, likenesses, and stadiums. This campaign, they argue, sidesteps those guardrails by using a celebrity face instead.
The company's CEO has defended the approach, saying Sweeney was "driving" the visual direction of the campaign herself. That statement has done little to quiet the criticism.
Adding to the attention, Zendaya's mother reshared several posts commenting on the controversy, according to BuzzFeed, widening the circle of public figures drawn into the conversation.
Opinion writers at USA Today and The Washington Post have framed the dispute as less about Sweeney and more about what the ads reveal: how quickly sports gambling has become normalized in American entertainment, and how few rules govern the way it is marketed.
The New York Times reported that the backlash from athletes was immediate and pointed, with some questioning why a betting company would choose this particular creative strategy at a moment when gambling's role in sports is already under scrutiny.
What remains unresolved is whether any league, union, or regulator will respond formally. So far, the pushback has been public but not institutional — a distinction that could matter if the campaign continues to run.