Actress Sydney Sweeney has inked a sports gambling sponsorship deal with the prediction market Novig.
In the ad campaign, Sweeney is shown nearly naked acting out sports like basketball, hockey, and tennis. The softcore porn video was posted to Instagram on Wednesday.
“Think you know sports? Prove it,” Sweeney says at the beginning of the advertisement promoting the New York-based prediction market.
Her deal with Novig came in the wake of LeBron James, Eli Manning, and Derek Jeter promoting Polymarket, another prediction-market gambling platform, in a new video released this week.
States across the country have argued that prediction markets constitute an illegal form of sports gambling. The legality of the product, which is under CFTC purview, could reach the Supreme Court.
Celebrity endorsements of any kind can make online gambling products feel safer than they are, potentially harming users through excessive losses.
The aforementioned celebrities join a long list of others who have endorsed online gambling products in recent years. More recently, actor Matthew Broderick endorsed slot gambling on Hard Rock Bet.
Other countries, such as Australia and Canada, have rules in place to limit athlete or celebrity endorsement of gambling products due to the harm it is associated with.
Americans lose tens of billions of dollars each year to sports betting through state-regulated betting apps, prediction markets, daily fantasy sports, sweepstakes sportsbooks, and offshore gambling sites.
Gambling addiction is associated with the highest rates of suicide among addictions.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently described sports betting as “the new opioid crisis.”
