Powerade Fired 'Never Just Sports' at Novig in Times Square

Novig launched its "Just Sports" campaign with Sydney Sweeney on September 9 and built a media cycle that ran for a full month ... then Powerade put up a "Never Just Sports" digital billboard in Times Square, per DesignRush, and the conversation got a new angle.

Leah Macko, VP of brand marketing for POWERADE, said the campaign was a matter of timing and brand values: "When the conversation around how women are portrayed in sports started to pick up, we felt it was important for POWERADE to share our perspective and reinforce what's always been at the heart of our brand," she told DesignRush.

The brand already had the foundation for that claim. Powerade's women's sports portfolio includes Flau'Jae Johnson, Sha'Carri Richardson, Katie Grimes, Alex Morgan, and Tatjana Smith. "Never Just Sports" was not a new posture. It was a restatement, using Novig's own tagline as the setup.

What the Athletes Actually Said

The athlete backlash that gave Powerade its opening started hours after the Novig ad broke. As this desk covered in September, Australian gold medalist swimmer Ariarne Titmus wrote that she was "infuriated" and could not describe "how we live in a world where monetizing a woman's body and sexualizing women's sport is still a thing." British sprinter Amy Hunt posted a direct message: "This is what women in sport look like. Muscles, hard work, sweat." Gymnast Gracie Kramer's Instagram drew 1.2 million likes.

Olivia Bennett, senior account director at Go Up, argued the optics were not a minor PR problem: per Fox News, "once the people who actually work and compete in that world start using your campaign as an example of the problem, you have a much bigger reputational issue than a few negative comments online." PR analyst Adrienne Uthe from Kronus Communications drew a different line: "women having agency also means allowing women to make choices about their image that other women may not personally agree with."

The Problem With Powerade's Argument

The complication is Novig's data. As this desk reported in October, Novig posted 218% more first-time depositors and 187% more downloads in the three weeks after the campaign launched. The controversy was the advertising strategy, and the strategy worked.

A Yahoo Sports analysis explained the targeting plainly: men gamble at nearly double the rate of women (42.1% vs 21.5%). The ad was not aimed at female sports fans. The female athlete backlash was coverage, not the audience Novig was recruiting.

What Powerade's "Never Just Sports" move actually represents is a different kind of advertising bet. Novig targeted male bettors who respond to provocation. Powerade targets athletes and the people who aspire to their work ethic. Those audiences barely overlap. The billboard does not ask Novig to stop. It tells Powerade's audience who Powerade is, using the existing controversy as a backdrop at no acquisition cost.

Novig had not publicly responded to Powerade's campaign as of this publication.

Watch how Powerade activates around the FIFA Women's World Cup 2027, where "Never Just Sports" has an obvious home and the audience math points in a different direction entirely.

Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation with Sydney Sweeney, Powerade, Novig, or any brand or outlet mentioned here. We cover celebrity news and the business of entertainment.

Powerade Fired 'Never Just Sports' at Novig in Times Square

What the Athletes Actually Said

The Problem With Powerade's Argument

Sources & further reading

Cassie: 'It's Called Monetisation.' Sweeney's SYRN Agrees.

Sweeney: 'Grown Men Making Spreadsheets to Bet on My Underwear Color'

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