Vanessa Kade ends sponsorship with ACR
A whirlwind year for the Sunday Million record holder ends with her leaving her sponsor before the contract was due to end.
It's not uncommon to see a large number of ambassadors leave their sponsor at the start of the year as that is when contracts are typically renewed. We have seen this in 2022 with a lot of names leaving partypoker, for example.
It's rare, however, to see an ambassador end their partnership early with a sponsor, but that is what Vanessa Kade has done with Americas Cardroom (ACR).
Kade cited inappropriate behaviour behind-the-scenes was the reason she was stepping down. She referenced incidents last June where ACR boss Phil Nagy made misogynistic comments on a live stream as well accusations that he made more privately with female poker players. Kade said that similar issues were still happening that were not being addressed:
I’ve made a difficult decision to step down from ACR. pic.twitter.com/VWL5HSY2Vk
— Vanessa Kade (@VanessaKade) February 9, 2022
A rollercoaster year for Kade
It has been a remarkable year for Kade where ambassadorship is concerned. She was thrust into the limelight at the end of 2020 when Dan Bilzerian famously said 'quiet hoe, nobody knows who you are' after she spoke out about his sexism when he was appointed a GGPoker Pro. It may go down as one of the greatest self-owns in poker Twitter history.
In March last year she put pen to paper with ACR and just a few days later their shrewd move was rewarded when she won the PokerStars Sunday Million Anniversary event for $1,514,920, the biggest ever prize in the tournament's history. This made her a household name in the poker world and she became one of the highest profile players in the game.
When the story of Nagy's inappropriate comments broke she found herself in the spotlight again, as some people felt she needed to call out her employer in the same way she did Bilzerian.
She now leaves ACR just before the Global Poker Awards where she is nominated for breakout player of the year and a month before she defends her title in the Sunday Million Anniversary event.
The smart money is certainly on her not going the rest of the year without a sponsor's patch.
Will she sign a new deal in 2022? Let us know in the comments:
