Kelly Stafford weighs in on Sydney Sweeney’s controversial sports betting ad

Kelly Stafford has spent years raising four daughters inside the increasingly blurred intersection of sports, celebrity and social media. This week, the wife of reigning NFL MVP and Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford found another teaching moment when she shared her take on the ongoing debate regarding actress Sydney Sweeney’s provocative campaign for sports prediction and trading platform app Novig, which features the “Euphoria” star posing nude with strategically placed sports equipment. 

Stafford, 37, weighed in on the controversy on Monday when she shared a video from influencer Daniel Hong to her Instagram Story with an emphatic endorsement of his message: “THIS THIS THIS THIS.”

In the video, Hong, a father of two daughters, argues over a photo of Sweeney that the ongoing controversy surrounding the ad reinforces a lesson he believes every young girl needs to hear early: attention and self-worth are not interchangeable.

“Appearance can get you attention: likes, comments, followers, money, opportunities,” Hong said. “All of that is very real. What I want them to understand is that attention and value are not the same thing.”

That message apparently resonated with Stafford, who shares four daughters with Matthew and has frequently discussed parenting on social media and her “The Morning After” podcast, which is currently on hiatus.

The Novig campaign has ignited a larger debate over the sexualization of women in sports, with several prominent female athletes criticizing its imagery.

Australian Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus called the campaign “a kick in the face to every woman who has dedicated her life to perfecting her craft,” questioning why women’s bodies continue to be monetized alongside sports.

Paralympic athlete Beatriz Hatz offered an even sharper rebuke, arguing that women “deserve to compete at the peak of our ability and be seen as athletes.”

Former UCLA gymnast Gracie Kramer joined the conversation by posting footage of herself competing with the caption: “Idk what Sydney Sweeney was doing, but this is what a woman in sports looks like.”

Sweeney appeared to answer some of the criticism without directly addressing it, sharing images of athletes who previously posed nude for ESPN The Magazine’s famous Body Issue.

The debate is ultimately larger than one advertisement. For Stafford, it appears to have hit especially close to home.

With four daughters growing up in a world where attention can be converted into currency with a swipe of a screen, Hong’s message was the one she chose to amplify: popularity can have a price tag, but it shouldn’t determine a girl’s value.

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