Alexis Ohanian highlights ‘actual athletes’ amid Sydney Sweeney ad backlash

The Reddit founder’s innovative all-female meet, Athlos, makes its UK debut on Friday at London’s sold-out StoneX stadium, where Keely Hodgkinson and Georgia Hunter Bell are among the women vying for Tiffany crowns and a share of the 1,057,000 million US dollar (£790,266) prize pot.

Even Ohanian’s wife, tennis great Serena Williams, has been drawn into the discourse over the advert, which featured a nude Sweeney strategically covered by sporting equipment. It ignited viral dissent from athletes, who have used it as a launchpad to celebrate women in sport – also one of Athlos’ primary objectives.

“Look, we know sex sells as a product. That’s a thing that just continues to apparently work,” Ohanian told the Press Association, after viewing the advertisement for the first time with the news agency.

“It is crazy to me that it seems like people now are just trying to generate attention by any means necessary, and it is incredibly disappointing that this is even a conversation when you have so many actual athletes who are still finding their economic footing in most of the sports.

“How do I feel about it? It’s not at all surprising, unfortunately, and I am glad to see so many women athletes remixing it as a way to promote what they are about.”

The entrepreneur’s portfolio also includes a minority stake in Chelsea Women, and he was a founding controlling owner of the National Women’s Soccer League side Angel City.

Social media and boosting athlete compensation were key factors in the launch of spectacle-embracing, “entertainment-rich” Athlos, born out of Ohanian’s regret, he revealed, “that what I should have done in 2019 was actually just buy the (NWSL)”.

Ohanian found a “no-brainer” new venture in women’s athletics, where he learned “the follower counts of the top women athletes just crush the men. Compared to six years ago, brands really want to be aligned with women’s sports, so it checked all these boxes of obviousness from a business case”.

He said: “Even as we get a little bit of pushback from folks who are like, ‘Why don’t you add the men?’, I actually see that as a positive because it means they care, and we’ll do it. I think we’ll probably be the first league in history to have a women’s league that then includes men.”

Ohanian saw a chance to make an industry-accelerating difference to athletes’ livelihoods with a significant prize pot, and enlisted US Olympians Gabby Thomas, Sha’Carri Richardson and Tara Davis-Woodhall as advisor-owners.

The 43-year-old is working with World Athletics to better integrate Athlos into the season and expand into a league format. He met with Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Tuesday, and hopes to “make London a fixture” on the tour.

With his business hat on, the father of two daughters concedes the Sweeney campaign was a “masterclass” in “free advertising”, the eye of a “perfect storm” of prediction-market product claiming to focus on ‘just sports’.

But, he said: “It hits this nerve where it feels like such a step back in light of all the progress women’s sports has been making.”

Some, including Sweeney herself, have shared images from past editions of ESPN’s Body Issue, marketed as a celebration “of the incredible power of the athletic form” and featuring 23-time grand slam singles winner Williams and other athletes posing semi-nude.

Ohanian sees accusations of hypocrisy as a “false equivalency”, noting: “They’re athletes. The resume of physical excellence is a fit body. No disrespect to Sydney Sweeney, but I don’t think she’s devoted her body and life to physical excellence in sport.”