Novig Banks a Billion. The Sweeney Backlash Was Free Media.
Weekly trading jumped 32.7% to $317 million, the app cracked the top 20 in sports downloads, and Jacob Fortinsky's startup briefly outpaced Polymarket and Kalshi in U.S. search ... Sydney Sweeney lost followers and held her equity.
Make It So ↓
Novig launched Sydney Sweeney's campaign on September 9 and two weeks later the scoreboard looked like this: $1 billion in cumulative trading volume, 250,000 users, and a startup that briefly outranked Polymarket and Kalshi in U.S. Google search interest, per DailyVoice.
Weekly trading volume rose 32.7% to $317.1 million in the weeks after the launch. The app climbed into the top 20 in sports downloads. Novig's Instagram account grew from 37,000 to 93,000 followers, a 151% increase, according to DailyVoice.
The ad logged 14 million views on X and 2.3 million on YouTube. The backlash op-eds from college newspapers, the open letters from athletes, the Sharon Stone quote ... all of it circulated. All of it kept the name Novig in the conversation.
Who Is Jacob Fortinsky
Fortinsky is 28, Harvard-educated, and spent time in investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch before co-founding Novig in 2021. His co-founder and CTO Kelechi Ukah is also a Harvard graduate and formerly worked at Jane Street and CERN. Fortinsky grew up in Larchmont, New York.
The company's headquarters is in the prediction markets space, which sits in a regulatory grey zone distinct from traditional sportsbooks. Novig is not a sportsbook; it operates peer-to-peer prediction contracts on sporting events.
A Different Ledger
Sydney Sweeney's personal Instagram account dropped approximately 200,000 followers in the same window, per DailyVoice. She holds equity in Novig, not a flat talent fee. Novig's follower gains and Sweeney's personal audience losses are not counted on the same spreadsheet.
The equity structure means Sweeney's long-term return depends on whether those trading volume numbers sustain. The ad drew her critics in. Whether it drew in the right users is a question only Novig's retention metrics will answer.
These are Novig's reported figures. The company has not published audited financials. What Novig calls weekly trading volume reflects user activity on its platform, by its own count, and should be read as such.
The campaign was not designed for critics to like it. The outrage was the amplification mechanism. College op-eds, sports outlet responses, political commentary shows, entertainment columns ... those are not paid placements. That kind of saturation is exactly what a polarizing creative brief is built to produce, and the distribution numbers suggest it worked.
Novig and representatives for Sydney Sweeney did not respond to requests for comment at the time of this report.
Ad Watch News is an independent commentary site with no affiliation to Novig, Jacob Fortinsky, Sydney Sweeney, Polymarket, Kalshi, or any other party named here. This report draws from the outlet listed below.
The metric that will matter most by year-end is whether Novig's weekly trading volume held once the earned-media cycle quieted down.
