Sharon Stone told Sydney Sweeney to "take responsibility" for her nearly nude sports betting ad, as athletes attacked and a critic called the backlash pure jealousy.
At Variety’s 2026 Power of Women event in Beverly Hills, Sharon Stone did not hold back on Sydney Sweeney’s provocative campaign for the sports prediction platform Novig.
The 68-year-old actress, speaking with People on Wednesday at The Beverly Hills Hotel, framed the nearly nude billboard and ad as a problem for women’s sports, and put the burden squarely on the 29-year-old "Euphoria" star to own it.
Stone said she would not sit in judgment. She still made clear what she expected.
Speaking at the Los Angeles event, Stone told People:
"I think that it’s up to her to take responsibility for her actions, not up to me to judge her for her actions. It is up to me to be a cheerleader for the women who have made it through and become champions in women’s sports."
She added a sharper line on the gambling pitch itself.
"We can’t denigrate women’s sports to get men’s attention so they can gamble."
The ad leaves little to the imagination. Sweeney appears nearly nude, posing with sports equipment, and sells the idea that Novig lets viewers bet on "just sports." A promotional billboard went up in Times Square on Sept. 16, 2026. Female athletes did not stay quiet.
Australian Olympic gold medalist swimmer Ariarne Titmus took to Instagram with raw anger.
Titmus wrote that she could not describe how infuriated she felt watching the ad, then asked how the world still accepts "monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport."
British sprinter Amy Hunt joined in after finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
Hunt addressed Sweeney directly, saying this is what women in sport look like: "Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears."
The message from the athletes was plain. They cast Sweeney’s campaign as a cheap sexual sell that undercut the grind of real competition.
Sweeney answered the pile-on by pointing at the culture’s selective memory. She shared social media posts featuring nude ESPN magazine images of high-profile athletes, Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey, Sue Bird, Megan Rapinoe, and Caroline Wozniacki.
The contrast needed no speech. Body-forward images of star athletes had been packaged as empowerment for years. A Hollywood actress doing a steamy sports-betting spot suddenly became a crisis for women’s sports.
Curtis Houck, managing editor at Newsbusters, told Fox News Digital the fury was wildly out of proportion, and driven by something uglier than principle.
Houck said:
"If you'd listen to Sharon Stone, you'd think Sydney Sweeney committed a serious criminal offense resulting in jail time, not starring in a provocative sports betting ad. Give me a break."
He went further on the motive behind the stack-up of criticism.
"This entire pile-on against Sweeney comes down to one thing: jealousy. Throw in her refusal to go along to get along with the woke left, and she's persona non grata."
That tracks the pattern. Sweeney draws heat when she refuses the approved political script. The same cultural machine that cheers sexualized athlete spreads in glossy magazines discovers sudden purity rules when the face is hers and the client is a betting app.
Fox News Digital reached out to both Stone and Sweeney for comment.
Stone tied her lecture to her personal history in sports. She said she once threatened to sue high school administrators so she could try out for the boys’ golf team, adding that she "had something to prove" and successfully "made the boys team."
She now casts herself as a cheerleader for women who fought through to become champions. In her telling, a sexy gambling ad undercuts that fight by chasing male attention and betting dollars.
The two actresses are not strangers on the circuit. Stone and Sweeney both attended Variety’s 2025 Power of Women event at the same Beverly Hills Hotel on Oct. 29, 2025. A year later, the stage and the subject had changed.
Stone’s Sept. 23, 2026, onstage appearance at the 2026 Power of Women event put the critique in front of an industry crowd built around celebrating women’s influence. The target was a younger star whose Novig campaign had already gone national via Times Square.
Novig is a sports prediction and betting platform. The creative choice was obvious: use Sweeney’s fame and a stripped-down sports aesthetic to sell wagers. Athletes heard a cheapening of their work. Stone heard a denigration of women’s sports for gambling attention. Sweeney’s response posts answered with the industry’s own archive of nude athlete imagery.
The fight is not really about whether sex sells. It always has. It is about who is allowed to sell it, and which political tribe gets to declare the sale empowering or degrading.
When the images fit the right magazine franchise and the right activist-approved names, the conversation stays polite. When the face is Sweeney’s and the product is sports betting, the volume rises and the moral language arrives on cue.
Houck’s charge of jealousy and punishment for refusing "the woke left" sits on top of that double standard. Stone’s call for Sweeney to "take responsibility" lands in the same week athletes framed the ad as an insult to sweat and medals. Sweeney’s ESPN throwback posts made the selective outrage harder to miss.
Hollywood and activist sport can lecture a young actress about dignity while recycling the same body-as-billboard formula they already normalized, and expect the public not to notice the switch.
