This month has seen another brand lean into the outdated notion that any publicity is good publicity, in the form of US “sports prediction” (aka, gambling) site Novig’s collaboration with actress Sydney Sweeney.
Timed to capitalise on the high-profile start of the American football season and only weeks after the company’s launch, the campaign has infuriated women athletes worldwide, with its scant use of a wardrobe department and questionable approach to hygiene around basketball rims.
In Australia, Ariarne Titmus and Tilly Kearns led criticism of women’s connection to sport once again being reduced to overt sexualisation, with Dua Lipa’s Training Season forming the soundtrack of countless athletes, journalists and fans clapping back with reels highlighting the actual blood, sweat and tears it takes to compete, follow or work in sport.
By leading with delicately positioned footballs, Novig sought to reach male consumers – and, particularly, young, straight men – by relying on an extraordinarily tired idea of masculinity: that if you want the attention of young men, package together sport, gambling and a nearly naked woman and they will come running.
It was unimaginative, outdated and frankly, boring.
This campaign tells young men that this is what they’re supposed to want. That sport is something to bet on. That women are to be objectified. That risk-taking is masculine. And that all of this belongs together.
For those working with teenage boys, this matters.
Enormous amounts of time is, quite rightly, being invested in asking boys to develop healthier relationships with themselves and the people around them. These boys are taught respect, consent and boundaries. Emotional expression and meaningful connection is encouraged. Boys are asked to see girls and women as whole human beings rather than objects, and to have the courage to challenge their mates when they don’t.
We should absolutely hold boys accountable when they fail to live those values. But accountability has to sit alongside an honest examination of the culture adults are creating around them.
We cannot tell teenage boys in the classroom that women aren’t objects, then sit by when industries outside the school gate make enormous amounts of money selling them precisely the opposite.
Aside from the harms, Novig’s campaign misses what the best part of sport actually is.
Connection.
Amid the much-discussed epidemic of men’s loneliness, sport is one of the most important environments available to find and build connection in a healthy way.
Think about the viral footage from the end of Saturday’s gripping preliminary final win by Brisbane over Hawthorn, capturing what appears to be a grandson embracing his grandfather, both replete in Lions gear.
Or the shared joyfulness of the FIFA World Cup, led by Norway’s Viking Row that went around the world, and 2023’s FIFA Women’s World Cup before that.
Think about how many men, young and old, use their local sports club to maintain social bonds, or to find their feet in new towns or even new countries.
The teammate who notices his mate isn’t himself and checks in or the captain who leads with vulnerability as well as strength.
Then there are the dads and father figures on the sidelines every week for their daughters’ teams, creating more opportunities than ever before.
Reducing men and boys to neanderthalic consumers of anything featuring D cups is unfair, just as it’s unfair to reduce their interest in women in sport to their perceived attractiveness.
It’s unfair to the many men who have helped drive the extraordinary growth of women’s sport in Australia over the past decade. Administrators, coaches, journalists, advocates, allies, fathers and brothers who understood that greater opportunity for women and girls makes sport better for everyone, and male sports fans who just like watching great sport, regardless of the gender of the athletes playing it.
Just as sport gives girls the opportunity to compete, to lead and to build strength, sport gives boys some of the things they need most: belonging, purpose, positive role models and an outlet for emotional expression. It gives boys permission to care deeply; to celebrate, to cry and to hug their mates.
Sport is, as we sadly know, far from perfect. Sport, and sporting culture, still has a long way to go in creating environments where women and girls are respected without question, and where men are supported to build healthier relationships with themselves and each other.
To be part of something bigger than themselves.
The objectification of women doesn’t exist in isolation. It can reinforce the very “boys will be boys” culture that sporting clubs and organisations across Australia have spent years trying to dismantle. We continue to hear stories of women and girls experiencing disrespect, harassment and even violence in and around sporting environments. Campaigns like Novig’s, or the recent Good Good x Callaway campaign that thought violence against women made a good punchline, risk pulling in precisely the opposite direction to the cultural change sport has been working towards.
And that opposing force accelerates when we consider what is being sold here: gambling.
The evidence about gambling harm among young men is well established. Gambling can have profound financial consequences, and the harm is far-reaching. It can affect mental health, relationships, work and study, and contribute to secrecy, shame and social isolation. It’s also strongly connected to increased family violence.
Australian research has shown among regular online sports and race bettors aged 18 to 34, more than four in five were classified as being at risk of gambling harm. Almost one quarter of young male sports bettors first placed a sports bet before they were 18.
At its best, sport can be one of the most powerful places we have to build belonging and connection, elevate women and girls, and shape healthier ideas about respect, relationships and what it means to be a man.
At its worst, sport can be at the forefront of reinforcing the very behaviours we are trying to leave behind: the objectification and disrespect of women and girls, entitlement, harmful risk-taking and outdated ideas of masculinity that ultimately diminish all of us. Just like our incredible women athletes raised their voices to rightly demand better, it’s ok for men and boys to expect better too.