Novig Topped Kalshi in Search for Three Days. Can the Sweeney Ad Bring Traders?
Novig’s Sydney Sweeney campaign sent US search interest sharply higher during football’s opening week. But how many of those searches became funded accounts or returning traders only time can tell.
The past week has been quite interesting for the prediction market sector, with discussion around Novig’s “Just Sports” campaign featuring Sydney Sweeney taking centre stage.
Did it hit the sweet spot? On visibility, the answer appears to be yes. On 8 September, Novig barely registered beside its larger rivals on Google Trends. Its US daily search index stood at 2, against 44 for Kalshi and 29 for Polymarket.
By Monday, 14 September, Novig had reached 100 in the same three-name comparison, ahead of Kalshi at 54 and Polymarket at 40. It stayed ahead of Kalshi for three days before falling back below it on Thursday.
For a brief window, the recently launched sports prediction markets exchange drew more US search interest than either rival. Whether that interest turns into regular traders is much harder to establish, only time can tell.
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A Nearly $200 Million Digital Ad Push for Prediction Markets
In August, the American Gaming Association estimated, using Sensor Tower data, that prediction markets spent nearly $200 million on digital advertising in the first seven months of 2026. It also estimated that prediction-market campaigns accounted for 57% of the digital sports-betting ad impressions measured in its study this year.
The September calendar made that competition more visible. LeBron James teased a Polymarket partnership on 5 September, with his representative describing a larger football-focused campaign. Novig released its Sweeney ad on the 9th. Kalshi published an ad featuring Pete Sampras that same day, adding to the multi-year creative deal it signed with Timothée Chalamet in June.
What none of the public announcements provides is a comparable price for acquiring an active customer. The campaigns, partnerships and aggregate digital spending are visible but the individual costs and the users they bring in are not.
The NFL Week 1 Volume Behind the Campaigns
Part of the audience these campaigns are chasing is already trading. Kalshi recorded $4.89 billion in volume across all markets over the NFL’s opening weekend, according to Reuters. The same report put trading on its Week 1 NFL contracts at more than $590 million across the full slate, from Wednesday through Monday.
The chart below adds a useful detail: most trading in the markets that Prediction Frontier tracked this week happened after kickoff. Winning a search before the game gets someone to look at Novig. Keeping them trading while the game unfolds depends on what they find on the exchange.
Image source: Prediction Frontier
The next few football weekends will give us a better read on whether Novig’s search interest holds and its trading persists across comparable games. However, strong volume will still not tell us how many traders the Sweeney campaign brought in. Newly funded accounts, returning traders and acquisition costs are figures only the platforms can provide.