Miss Universe suspended the organizers of the Miss USA pageant weeks after contestants accused the American competition of being rigged, according to a British news report.
Miss Universe CEO Amy Emmerich said the suspension against Miss Brand Corp., the company that runs the pageant, would be immediately enforced and investigated by a third party, according to internal emails obtained by the Daily Mail.
The email didn’t specify any reason for the suspension, but the move comes amid public ridicule from this year’s contestants for Miss USA’s chosen winner, R’Bonney Gabriel.
Miss Brand and Miss USA are both run by Crystle Stewart, who won the competition in 2008.
Contestants told the Mail that their suspicion grows from Ms. Gabriel is from Houston, where Miss Brand is headquartered. Another theory for Ms. Gabriel’s win was that she was crowned in order to reinvigorate the pageant’s brand by becoming the first Filipina winner.
“I think that [Miss USA] are in a state where they are trying to revamp and re-glamorize pageantry here in the United States, because we’ve been seeing a constant drop off in enrollment for pageants, and not just in the Miss USA system,” Mikala McGhee, who was this year’s Miss Missouri, told the Mail.
Ms. McGhee told the outlet that other contestants were gossiping about how Ms. Gabriel was preselected to win, but she said at the time she chalked it up to people reacting to the high-stress atmosphere.
Miss Montana Heather O’Keefe said in a TikTok video that alarm bells initially went off when contestants felt that Ms. Gabriel was being featured more in promotional social media posts.
Ms. Gabriel denied the charges of rigging in an E! News interview.
“I want to start by saying it was not rigged because I would never enter any pageant or any competition that I know I would win. I have a lot of integrity,” she said.
Ms. Stewart also denied the rigging accusations two weeks ago when they first surfaced.
“The allegations against the Miss USA Organization are misleading and against everything I stand for personally and professionally,” she told the New York Post.
Ms. Stewart had told the newspaper that she would cooperate with Miss Universe’s investigation.
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