I’m not sure too many people had even heard of Novig before they trolled us with a new ad featuring the actor Sydney Sweeney, so I’d imagine the US sports betting company has been sitting back and thinking “mission accomplished”. Anyone who has followed the reaction to the ad knows who Novig are now.

But this should never have been a Sweeney-bashing thing. She is allowed to be beautiful and glamorous and, if that’s what she wants, use that in her advertising. She’s not stupid – she’s a generational pin-up and knew what would get attention.

She is also a business partner with and equity holder in Novig, so both sides evidently decided this would work to promote the company.

She’s never been averse to controversy, as we saw with her American Eagle advertising campaign. Promoting women’s sports has never been her thing, nor has feminism in any form. It’s not her wheelhouse.

But . . . watching that ad, it was like flipping back to the Page Three days. It just looked ridiculous, silly and outdated. It was like a parody. I thought we’d moved on from this stuff, but here we are.

Then again, the gambling industry isn’t renowned for morality or progression. And whatever about the debate over women in sport in all of this, we shouldn’t lose sight of the reality that this is a clever ad, featuring a sexualised celebrity, that targets largely younger men who engage with sports through their phones, through social media. It encourages them to gamble – and we all know how damaging that can be. That’s probably what should be the chief concern in all of this.

So, for all the times Sweeney says “sports” in the ad, it’s not about sport at all – it’s about gambling.

Still, I’ve been heartened by the response from so many sportswomen to this, such as the outstanding English sprinter Amy Hunt. They’ve fought back against this representation of women, which has left us feeling like we’re stuck in a time warp.

It’s been a visceral reaction. Women are already so underrepresented in advertising. We want to know what goes in to becoming someone of Hunt’s stature, rather than seeing Sweeney sitting naked on a basketball hoop. Which looked decidedly uncomfortable.

We want to see hard work worshipped over celebrity. Women who put blood, sweat and tears into the pursuit of reaching their goals – they’re the kind of people we want to see lauded. That’s how we want to celebrate women, rather than sexualising them and having expectations of them looking a certain way.

Sweeney was chosen to represent the ‘ideal’ woman, but most ‘normal’ women do not relate to that imagery. And certainly not sportswomen who give every last ounce of effort to become outstanding athletes.

You don’t want young people’s minds being framed by ads like this, especially those of young men. You want them to know this ad isn’t healthy for their mothers, their sisters or any of the women in their lives. Or for them.

I expect no better from the gambling industry, but I’d like to think companies outside that world won’t take a similar route. You just hope this ad will fizzle out, that we’ll forget about it soon enough and it’ll go back to, say, the 1980s where it belongs.

If we can see more representation of women lifting up other women, and being brilliant in any walk of life, that will live longer in the memory than this ridiculous rage bait.