Asian Operators Give Vegas Casinos a Run

The billionaire Sheldon Adelson who became one of the world’s richest men just by creating a whole casino empire in Las Vegas and Macau is now doubling his profits in the Asian market. This is the hottest gambling market in the world where his Singapore location made $1 billion alone in the first year that it was opened. The chairman of Las Vegas Sands, the world’s biggest gambling company looked extremely confident when he opened the new $4.4 billion casino last week in Macau. On top of this new adventure, he plans to add another in Vietnam, Korea by developing more casinos and spending billions of dollars. This is on top of the $35 billion he plans on spending on the Spanish casino resort complex.

Not only is he growing and expanding on Asian turf, but there are other companies looking for potential sites to build on such as Rivals Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts Melco Crown, Malaysia’s Genting, and Hong Kong Listed Galaxy Entertainment. This means that the race to conquer the Asian turf is on between all of these companies. The revenue for these sites is supposed to rise from $1.3 billion up to $3 billion once the sites are finished. They are not all US formed businesses since a lot of the companies in the race are Asian. Universal Entertainment and Travellers are all expected to join together with a few others to make this dream a reality. "Countries like Singapore have provided a very good template for emerging jurisdictions looking to liberalize gaming entertainment," said Steven Tight, president of international development for U.S. giant Caesars Entertainment.

Caesars does not currently own or operate a casino in the Macau area, but they are expected to help out in the coming months with the new building. The Asian government wants to warn all of these companies that they are making their gambling rules stricter and that their new establishments should abide by all of the laws and regulations that they set forth. They are also concerned about the negative headline news that they might get for putting these resorts and casinos up in the area. Sands and Wynn are both in legal battles that have been drawn out and have had a lot of news coverage as well. There were even bribes that were brought to some of their attentions. This was brought up in court in Nevada.

"Since entering Macau, all three Las Vegas-based operators have had international headlines that have caused humiliation and 'loss of face' for their Chinese partners and government officials," said Matthew Ossolinski, chairman of Ossolinski Holdings. "Some government officials in Asia are now wondering: is it worth it?" Some of the United States operators within this Asian deal are looking to disconnect their ties from the US market to free them from any legal obligations in the states. "It would be creating a sort of international hybrid gaming company: an established, world-class operator without the American legal baggage," said fund manager Ossolinski.