Managing Editor
ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith’s sponsorship deal with Solitaire Cash by Papaya Gaming has found its way into the mainstream discussion. PokerScout was first to draw attention to the potential for controversy around the deal, given Papaya’s admission of having, at one time, pitted its users against house-run “bots,” all while describing those games as player-vs.-player contests of skill.
Mainstream outlets, including Front Office Sports and the New York Post, have since reported on Papaya’s false advertising lawsuit as well.
Smith is already embroiled in several controversies of his own. The Solitaire Clash sponsorship is mostly just a footnote as he deals with continued fallout for comments about Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, whose attacks on state Republicans he described as “rhetoric for the streets.”
The Solitaire Cash sponsorship explicitly plays on an earlier Smith controversy. He was caught on camera playing a solitaire app during the NBA Finals in June. An AI-generated ad by Papaya shows Smith getting chewed out by a fan at the game, to whom he responds:
No man, the game is trying to distract me from solitaire.
It then comically shows Smith ignoring a series of escalatingly serious scenarios — culminating in the literal apocalypse — in order to focus on solitaire.
The suit against Papaya was brought by its rival, Skillz, and is about to proceed to trial. Papaya had initially denied using bots, but no longer disputes, following the discovery phase, that it had used bots prior to November 2023.
Mina Kimes Backpedals
Several other ESPN-affiliated personalities initially boosted Smith’s endorsement of Solitaire Cash. However, some are now deleting tweets and backpedaling.
Journalist Mina Kimes, in particular, took heat for playing along with Smith’s campaign in a tweet she later deleted and apologized for. In response to one X user’s criticisms, she tweeted:
The truth is: I didn’t spend any time looking into the whole thing, and that’s 100% on me. Thought it was just typical marketing work, and I’m deeply embarrassed I didn’t vet it. A colossal fuck-up on my part.
Smith Claps Back Against Beadle
Longtime Smith critic Michelle Beadle went especially hard at him following the deal’s announcement on her Beadle and Decker podcast.
Smith responded on his show, Straight Shooter, saying that Beadle has been attacking him for over a decade, but that he’s never had anything to do with her and has ignored the attacks until now.
He proceeded to play a clip from the podcast in question:
ESPN pays him a gazillion dollars to get a lot of stuff wrong and yell. And he gets caught playing solitaire during the NBA final. And so instead of [apologizing], he doubles down[…] He doesn’t even give a shit about the stuff he’s given a gazillion dollars to talk about, and now he’s turning around and turning that into a money-making opportunity.
