Los Angeles Dodgers player Alex Call has begged TV networks to remove Sydney Sweeney’s controversial topless gambling ads from their playoff broadcasts.
Call took to social media on Wednesday night to complain about the ‘soft porn ads’ being broadcast while he was trying to watch the Dodgers’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers with his young son.
The outfielder posted on X: ‘Can we please get the soft porn ads off playoff broadcasts, TBS, Fox, NBC, @MLB?
‘My son wants to watch baseball with Dada, but how do I justify that when a half naked women [sic] could come on screen anytime??
‘This is America’s Pastime. Parents shouldn’t have to worry about this.’
Sweeney’s partnership with prediction market Novig, which features the 29-year-old actress with barely any clothes on, has sparked controversy in recent weeks.
A Dodgers star criticized TV networks for running Sydney Sweeney’s betting ad during games
Dodgers outfielder Alex Call revealed on social media he was watching the action with his son
Her first ad for Novig’s Just Sports campaign dropped on September 9, showing her posing naked with strategically positioned footballs, basketballs, tennis equipment, hockey gear and other sporting props.
The campaign generated millions of views across social media after its release and attracted criticism from users and female sports stars who objected to its imagery.
Sweeney, who has been dating businessman and former talent manager Scooter Braun for over a year, has not issued a formal statement to those comments but appeared to respond indirectly through cryptic Instagram Stories.
Many female athletes criticized the ad on social media and called it disrespectful to women.
‘I can’t describe how infuriated I feel when I watch this,’ four-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Ariarne Titmus wrote on Instagram. ‘How do we live in a world where monetizing a woman’s body and sexualizing women’s sport is still a thing?’
British sprinter Amy Hunt addressed the actor in a post-race interview at the Ultimate Championship in Budapest, Hungary.
‘Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sport look like,’ she said, looking at the camera. ‘Muscles, hard work, sweat, blood, tears.’
Former U.S. gymnast Gracie Kramer called the ad infuriating.
‘I’ve spent my entire life competing in a sport where female athletes have been oversexualized, reduced to our bodies, and forced to fight to be taken seriously for what we can actually do,’ she said on Instagram.
Kramer posted stories featuring female athletes training with the caption: ‘What a woman in sports looks like.’
The Hollywood star was accused of sexualizing women’s sport when her first ad dropped
In one of the images, Sweeney could be seen on top of a basketball hoop completely naked
Despite the backlash, the ad has appeared on billboards in New York’s Times Square
In an apparent reference to the criticism, Sweeney posted a series of covers from ESPN The Magazine’s ‘Body Issue,’ an annual special edition that showed athletes posing nude or semi-nude in a celebration of the diversity of bodies.
It later emerged that her relationship with Novig, which was founded in 2021 by Jacob Fortinsky and Kelechi Ukah and completed its transition into a sports-exclusive prediction market platform in August of this year, goes beyond a conventional endorsement.
She holds equity in Novig and was involved in developing the campaign, although the size of her stake has not been disclosed, as reported by Front Office Sports.
Doubling down on her commitment to Novig last week, Sweeney stripped down to just her underwear again on a second promo video for the sports trading app.
She went topless with strands of her long blonde hair partly covering her chest as she called out what other prediction markets are doing.
The provocative ad opened with a shot of the barefooted actress padding across a dimly lit stage in white underwear and nothing else.
The camera zoomed in on a close-up of her derriere and panned up slowly as she sat down on a chair before she propped two footballs against her chest.
This is not the first time her brand partnerships have sparked debate; her 2025 American Eagle campaign, which played on the homophones ‘jeans’ and ‘genes,’ previously triggered widespread online discussion.
