Stephen A. Smith’s solitaire payday has Michelle Beadle ‘praying for his downfall’
Michelle Beadle couldn’t say Stephen A. Smith’s name as she ripped the ESPN personality over his new ambassadorship with Papaya, a mobile games company, for the upcoming World Solitaire Championship (WSC).
“It’s not secret how I feel about that human,” Beadle said on the “Beadle and Decker” podcast when her co-host, Cody Decker, mentioned that Papaya is battling a federal lawsuit — accusing it of falsely marketing “games of skill” that were rigged with unbeatable bots, as reported by Front Office Sports.
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“Honestly, I’m not a religious person, but I pray for the downfall. I really do.
“It’s gross, man. You gotta have principles in this thing.”
On Monday, Papaya Gaming named Smith the company’s official ambassador for the first ever World Solitaire Championship in February.
It comes after Smith went viral for playing solitaire on his phone at Game 4 of the NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Indiana Pacers, which he was covering for ESPN.
Smith posted an AI-generated ad on social media Monday that spoofed his NBA Finals moment to promote Papaya’s mobile game Solitaire Cash.
“ESPN pays him a gazillion dollars to get a lot of stuff wrong and yell,” Beadle, who left ESPN in 2019, said. “He gets caught playing solitaire during the NBA freaking Finals, the thing he’s an expert in.
“… He made you look like fools for handing him a blank check in the first place, because doesn’t even give a s–t about the stuff that he’s paid a gazillion dollars to talk about. Now he’s turning around and turning that into a money-making opportunity… and it looks like a fraudulent crap business to begin with.”
The “First Take” host, who is also executive producer on the show, is making $21 million on his new deal with ESPN.
Beadle said the Worldwide Leader is at fault for “creating this monster that’s bigger than you now” because the company “let [Smith] run rampant.”
She added that on her last day on “Get Up,” ESPN’s daily morning talk show, ESPN aired promos for Smith appearing on the show as she received a goodbye on-air from the show’s host, Mike Greenberg.
Beadle hasn’t sugarcoated her opinions of Smith for years.
The former ESPNer publicly ripped Smith — saying she doesn’t respect him, among other things — after the reveal that he would replace her time slot on Mad Dog Sports Radio with his new Sirius XM show, which launched this September.
Beadle, who previously hosted ESPN’s “NBA Countdown,” is the host of “Run It Back,” an NBA-focused talk show on FanDuel TV with former players Chandler Parsons and Lou Williams.
In documents obtained by Front Office Sports, the lawsuit states that Papaya committed fraud through false advertising between 2019 and “at least November 2023,” using bots “masquerading as human players” in games where human players had money on the line, unfairly making it impossible for users to succeed.
“It is undisputed that Papaya used tailored bots to control the outcomes of tournaments,” a judge wrote in an Oct. 27 opinion. “By doing so, Papaya could prevent players from winning –- or allow them to win — no matter how they performed in the game.”
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