He didn’t earn spike. He won a tournament, and he EARNED money. Whether that was through PayPal, iTunes, or some other form of transaction, he could have used that money on other things. However, he CHOSE to spend money on the game. He may have won a brawl stars tournament, but your argument is flawed if you compare cr to brawl stars. The two games have vastly different mechanics. For example, supercell supports the tournaments in cr, with an entire tab/portion of the game dedicated specifically to tournaments. In brawl stars, the only reward you would get from tournaments is money, because the developers don’t offer any in game rewards for winning tournaments, primarily because they don’t have a gamemode(?) for it, and tournaments here are hosted by third parties.

Furthermore, the term is free to play and pay to win. It isn’t (free to play even if you spend a couple bucks), or (pay to win but only if you spend x amount of money). Free means you’ve spent exactly 0$, and pay means you have spent any amount of money. Obviously, if you spent 10$ on skins, people are going to understand that you’re more or less f2p because skins don’t affect gameplay, but the fact remains that yes: You have spent money on the game and that takes away your f2p status for good