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Novig gave actress Sydney Sweeney an equity stake in the company instead of a cash fee for its "Just Sports" campaign, which launched September 9 and ran into NFL kickoff week alongside rival celebrity ad blitzes from Kalshi and Polymarket. Sweeney says she approached Novig's founder herself and asked for ownership, not a paycheck, a structure that inverts how sportsbooks have paid for star power for a decade.
The ad, in which Sweeney uses sports equipment to cover herself while making the case that "Novig is just sports," passed 9 million views on X within its first day, according to a roundup by trade outlet iGaming Business. It landed in the same week Kalshi put Marshawn Lynch through a superhero transformation and Polymarket ran a multi-athlete football spot, making prediction markets the biggest celebrity advertisers in American sport for a single week, not just the biggest customer-acquisition spenders.
Why an equity endorsement deal beat a flat fee
Novig is a federally regulated, sports-only prediction market that launched nationwide in August 2026 for users 21 and older, one of several exchanges competing with Kalshi and Polymarket to trade sports outcomes as derivatives contracts rather than licensed wagers. Chief executive Jacob Fortinsky said Sweeney helped shape both the creative and the message, not just deliver it on camera. Sweeney has been selective about which brands she fronts: "I don't like to just put my face on something," she said. "Being able to be a part of watching this company grow, and not just be the face of it, is really important to me."
That is a different transaction than a flat endorsement fee. An equity endorsement deal ties the star's payoff to whether the company she is fronting actually grows, which gives Sweeney a reason to keep pushing the brand past launch week and gives Novig a spokesperson with no incentive to walk once the check clears. It is closer to the athlete-investor deals Kalshi has already made with NBA and NFL players than to a traditional celebrity ad buy, and it lands in a sector still working out whether reach converts into paying accounts, the same open question that dogged ESPN Bet's billion-dollar media push before PENN Entertainment shut it down.
Kalshi and Polymarket answer with their own rosters
Neither rival let the week pass unanswered:
- Kalshi put former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch through a Craig Gillespie-directed "Beast Mode" transformation, produced by agency es muy good and shot on 35mm film, adding to a roster that already includes actor Timothée Chalamet and a Pete Sampras spot timed to the US Open.
- Polymarket ran a multi-athlete football commercial fronted by LeBron James, alongside Eli Manning, Derek Jeter, filmmaker Spike Lee and model Emily Ratajkowski.
- Kalshi and Polymarket are each valued at roughly $20 billion, funding levels that let both outspend most licensed sportsbooks on a single ad buy.
"Marshawn's personality is truly one of one," said Keaton Inglis, Kalshi's head of growth, of the Lynch spot. "We wanted to explore the regular, everyday side of being Marshawn." Steve Gonzalez, founder of es muy good, credited Lynch's "acting ability and comedic timing" for carrying the concept.
The three campaigns sit alongside the stadium-signage race the same operators have been running all summer. Polymarket bought Yankee Stadium LED boards and Kalshi renamed a Madison Square Garden concourse after itself in August, and DraftKings raised its own marketing spend 38% to $322.5 million in the second quarter largely to promote its Predictions product. Celebrity ads and stadium real estate are now two lines of the same growth-marketing budget, aimed at building consumer brands before regulators settle what these platforms legally are.
The backlash is part of the spend, not a side effect
Sweeney's ad drew immediate criticism on social media, with posts accusing Novig of "selling gambling by selling sex" and questioning whether the celebrities involved understood what they were fronting, according to Fortune's reporting on the campaign's reception. That reaction lands on a sector already facing scrutiny over how little safer-gambling messaging its ads carry compared with licensed sportsbooks, since prediction markets answer to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission rather than to any state gaming regulator. A Ninth Circuit ruling in August upheld Nevada's authority to police Kalshi's sports contracts as gambling, a decision the industry expects could reach the Supreme Court.
None of that has slowed the spending. If anything, the legal uncertainty is an argument for locking in recognizable faces and loyal users now, while the underlying legal status is still being litigated rather than settled.
An endorsement that owns a stake in the outcome too
A cash fee ends when the campaign does. An equity stake does not, which is the real bet Sweeney made and the one her rivals' celebrity rosters have not. Lynch, Chalamet and Sampras get paid for showing up; several of Kalshi's athlete backers hold investments made separately from their ad appearances, but the company has not said Lynch's new spot came with equity attached. Sweeney's arrangement, volunteered rather than negotiated by Novig, sets a different bar for what a prediction market has to offer talent to stand out in a market where every competitor can already afford a Super Bowl-grade production budget.
Related: DraftKings' Marketing Spend Jumps 38% on Predictions Bet | Polymarket and Kalshi Outbid Sportsbooks for Stadium Signage | ESPN Bet Proved an Audience Is Not a Customer Base | Prediction Market Bets Skip the Safer-Gambling Warnings