Sydney Sweeney is almost naked, sitting on a basket, covered in balls, rackets and sports equipment, while repeating a word that should be the real center of the commercial: sport. The result, however, was exactly the opposite, because within a few days of the Novig campaign, an American sports forecasting and trading platform in which the actress also owns a stake, there was much less talk about sport than about Sydney Sweeney’s body, and above all a revolt began led by some of the most important international athletes.
The four-time Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus defined the campaign as a slap in the face to women who have dedicated their lives to sport, while the British sprinter Amy Hunt, after a race, responded by showing muscles, effort and competitive performance and chanting a simple concept: “this is what women look like in sport”. Cyclists, gymnasts, swimmers and other Olympians followed the same path, transforming the protest into a social counter-movement in which the bodies built to sell something were contrasted with those built from years of training, defeats, medals, sweat and discipline.
It might seem like yet another reputational crisis for a celebrity. For Sydney Sweeney, however, he has almost become an economic model.
Twelve million searches per month
In fact, almost at the same time as the new controversy, an analysis by PlayersTime on the ability of Hollywood stars to generate box office receipts and digital attention produced data that explains the particular moment experienced by the Hollywood actress much better than any advertising campaign. Euphoria: according to estimates developed through Ahrefs, his name generates approx 12 million monthly searchesalmost three times those of Jacob Elordi, stuck at 4.3 million, and Pedro Pascal, who collects around four million.
Behind come Brad Pitt, with 3.5 million, Sadie Sink with 3.4, Tom Cruise with three, Henry Cavill with 2.8, Leonardo DiCaprio with 2.7, Scarlett Johansson with 2.6 and Anne Hathaway with 2.5 million. It is not a scientific measure of universal fame and it is not even equivalent to saying that twelve million different people search for Sydney Sweeney every month, because the data from SEO tools estimate the volume of queries and not individuals, but the disproportion remains impressive: in the sample analyzed, no one generates digital curiosity comparable to hers.
And this is where it gets interesting, because Sydney Sweeney is not simultaneously the queen of the box office.
PlayersTime calculates approximately $403 million in total takings for its films in the period examined, while Jon Bernthal tops the commercial rankings with approximately $3.86 billion, ahead of Zendaya, with $3.79 billion, and Tom Holland, with $3.67. Numbers that should be read with caution, because the method attributes to the actors the global earnings of the films in which they appear, even when they play secondary roles, and therefore measures participation in the most successful titles rather than the individual ability to sell tickets. But this very imperfection highlights an increasingly important difference in the contemporary star system: cashing in at the cinema and gaining attention are no longer necessarily the same thing.
Sydney Sweeney and the economics of controversy
Sweeney seems to have understood this better than most. Films, red carpets, fashion, interviews, advertising campaigns and controversies no longer live in separate compartments, but continually feed the same circuit, in which the final product is visibility.
The Novig commercial is almost a perfect experiment. According to an analysis reported by BusinessInsiderafter the diffusion of the campaign the social mentions of the company increased nine times and the positive comments were even more numerous than the negative ones, despite the fact that the public narrative was dominated by the protest of the sportswomen. However, there is an even more significant fact: only a small part of the conversations, around 4 percent, mentioned Novig directly. In other words, everyone was talking about the ad, a lot of people were talking about Sydney Sweeney, but far fewer remembered who was actually selling the product.
It is the paradox of the attention economy applied to celebrities: attracting eyes has become relatively simple, transforming them into lasting value for the brand much less so.
For Sweeney, however, the dynamic works differently, because the main brand is now Sydney Sweeney herself. If a campaign is celebrated, its name circulates; if she is accused of sexism, her name circulates; if Olympic athletes publish videos to protest her, her name will circulate even more. Even the response to the controversy, with the sharing of images of sportswomen who had posed naked for photo shoots in the past, reopened the debate instead of closing it.
The new star doesn’t have to please everyone
Hollywood has always had actors capable of polarizing audiences, but what’s new is that today polarization can be measured, monetized and reproduced almost in real time. You don’t necessarily need to be the most loved person, or have the most watched film of the year: it’s enough to become the one about whom everyone feels the need to have an opinion.
This, more than twelve million searches, is the true measure of Sydney Sweeney’s moment. Jon Bernthal can appear in the gigantic cinematic successes that brought him to the top of the PlayersTime rankings, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day has now exceeded 2.4 billion dollars worldwide, but the name that continues to generate discussions outside the cinema is that of the actress Euphoria.
The question raised by sportswomen remains, and is much more serious than marketing numbers: at a time when women’s sport is gaining audiences, investments and authority, does it still make sense to use the body of an almost naked woman as a shortcut to attract a predominantly male audience?
But from the point of view of the star system there is another question, perhaps even more interesting. If outrage, memes, criticism, and defensiveness all produce the same result—millions of people searching for your name— What difference remains, economically, between being adored and being contested?
