Adelson speech at G2E & online gambling

The boss of Las Vegas Sands Sheldon Adelson held centre stage for his keynote speech at the G2E on Wednesday 1^st October. The evening before Casino mogul Steve Wynn failed to win over the audience with a less than informative speech that told the delegates nothing new and came across as a history lesson one attendee said.

However Sheldon Adelson opened up much more and showed Mr Wynn who was sitting in the front row to listen a few things about speaking.

Las Vegas Sands Chairman said that Macau and the VIP segment of the business that has seen a major slump over recent months will recover by end of this year or early next. He said that the major corruption scandal that the Chinese government has been conducting will calm down over the next couple of months and VIP gamblers will return to the world’s largest gambling hub. Macau has suffered recent months of declining revenues because of VIP gamblers attending in lower numbers.

Mr Adelson also went on to say he would be interested in developing a casino in northern New Jersey Meadowland racetrack if the state were to allow for casinos outside of Atlantic City. He also at the same time had a critical note towards Steve Wynn by saying he was not interested in the Boston casino license that Wynn Resorts has just won as Adelson believes the format of the casino, hotel and conference facilities will not work in the city.

Of course the Republican supporter and donator saved time to attack online gambling in the US, as he is well known to want the federal government to totally ban the activity altogether. Mr Adelson gave a scenario that went “how do you know when someone logs on and is 18 years old they do not then pass that smartphone or tablet over to an underage person to gamble?” The audience gave little support in the way of applause to that.

He also said that online gambling makes casinos available to everyone and every family making it all too prevalent in the country and is strongly opposed to the concept, once again there was little applause from an audience that are for the most part pro-gambling and many pro-online gambling.

In the end Mr Adelson said that he was against online gambling because his father was a gambler and he knew the damage gambling does to a family, many of the audience then seemed confused that Mr Adelson operated casinos at all given that fact.

The speech was more enlightening that the evening before however the case for opposing online gambling was not made by one of the staunchest opponents.