Prediction markets are a cynical business.
Many customers will lose money, and the real product may just be the delightful dopamine hit that comes in that brief window between placing a bet and its outcome – which is statistically more likely to be a disappointment than a victory. So the bettor has to think they are buying more than their own fleecing.
Enter Sydney Sweeney, the icily beautiful actor who stars in a sports prediction market company’s ad campaign wearing little more than a bat and balls. She’s not a professional athlete, but she functions to remind us that plenty of people want us to believe the best woman in sports is the one who appeals to men.
It’s the same ethos that puts capturing the male gaze on a list of hiring criteria for TV sideline reporters, and made Olivia Dunne the richest athlete in college sports. But of course Dunne put in years of training as an elite gymnast, and didn’t serve to make a mockery of women’s sports.
Does Sweeney? After her American Eagle campaign was criticized as eugenics-adjacent, she eventually issued vague comments about how, yawn, surprised she was at the outcry. If she were actually bothered, she might check the optics of campaigns like the one causing so much outcry at the moment. Certainly once she saw how her blond, blue-eyed image was being utilized and perceived, she would be more discerning when sifting through the endorsement opportunities that came her way.
Her lack of apparent concern must be as well-compensated as her one-note acting. The prediction company she is promoting in this campaign lists her as a strategic partner and equity holder and, if the company can negotiate shifting legal terrain, that could make Sweeney orders of magnitude richer for absorbing the critique.
Olympic swimmer and four-time gold medalist Ariarne Titmus is one of many professional athletes who have expressed disappointment and anger with the provocatively regressive campaign.
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“How do we live in a world where monetising a women’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing?” she wrote on Instagram.
Women’s sports are being professionalized at a pace eclipsing anything we’ve previously seen. Leagues are expanding, ratings and attendance are up, and some teams have been valued at more than $500m. Female athletes have real power – financially and with their social media platforms. Any company looking to get into the space has a pick of champions who would communicate the company’s message.
But for all that progress, there are executives and fans who would prefer that sports looked how they did back when they were kids. Many of them are gatekeepers in traditional media, and many outlets still treat women’s sports less seriously than men’s. Purdue academic Cheryl Cooky’s new research details the trend in all its glory.
In an era in which stoking outrage can win elections and make you a wealthy sports bloviator, there are fewer actual consequences to stop a company from trying to offend potential consumers.
Of course, it is still possible to create a marketing campaign so disastrous it can severely damage a company. Look no further than the golf content specialist Good Good, which recently ran and then retracted a commercial which appeared to make light of violence against women.
Good Good’s front office has been shaken up. But the company lost a partnership with industry stalwart Callaway Golf, a reality show it launched was cancelled, stores pulled merchandise off the shelves, and its name was pulled off a PGA Tour tournament. Co-founder Garrett Clark eventually posted an eight-minute apology video, but whenever you have to announce that you don’t condone domestic violence, you’ve lost control of the narrative. Maybe golf isn’t the best place to go for edgy.
Prediction markets, however, are in a particularly calculating line of business. As was the case with cigarette companies before them, few people believe the product is actually good for anyone. There are allegations that people with inside information on war and troop movements are placing bets in the liminal space between planning and action.
So what is there for a prediction market to lose by stoking outrage with a proven outrage-stoker like Sweeney? Unlike with Good Good, there is no established brand partner to disappoint. The sports prediction consumers that the maker of the Sweeney ad is likely courting are the same young men who will be titillated by the actor and delighted by the subversive naughtiness of all the froth.
The message cynically fits the audience.
Even though prediction markets aren’t the same as traditional sportsbooks, they are in the same general family. Sports consumers can’t escape the ads, the conversations, the sponsorships when watching a game. It seems everyone wants a piece of the action.
What those behind the Sweeney ad are actually predicting is a column like this, and the outrage of athletes who are trying to push back the regressive tide. I’d wager they hope to use it to attract more young men to open accounts. After all, poison in the discourse is good for business.
