More than gambling: Mr Adelson (left) receiving the Lifetime Achievement award from Mr Forbes yesterday THE gaming industry worldwide is 'still in its infancy' with a lot of room for growth, Las Vegas Sands Corp chairman and chief executive Sheldon Adelson said yesterday.
'Gaming has evolved from gambling dens into Disneylands for adults,' he told chief executives on the last day of the Forbes Global CEO Conference.
According to him, Asia has room for about 10 scaled-down versions of Las Vegas. 'I think the world is recognising that gaming is more than just gambling,' he said. 'It's one of the many elements of entertainment that adults want to enjoy.'
Las Vegas Sands won the licence to build and operate Singapore's Marina Bay integrated resort last year, beating three other contenders.
Yesterday, Mr Adelson was awarded the Malcolm S Forbes Lifetime Achievement Award by Forbes president and CEO Steve Forbes, who said he had revolutionised the gaming industry. Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing was the first recipient of the award last year.
The gaming industry 'has evolved to the point where at The Venetian hotel-casino (in Las Vegas)... the casino represents only one per cent of the total amount of space in the building,' Mr Adelson said.
At the US$2.4 billion Venetian Macao, which opened last month in Macau, the casino takes up just 5 per cent of the total 10.5 million sq ft of space, he said. The rest is allocated to shopping, indoor sports and other activities.
Casinos used to be wall-to-wall, said Mr Adelson. They were gambling dens with no amenities. But Singapore's Marina Bay resort will integrate 'all the elements of entertainment.'
The Las Vegas Sands boss was ranked sixth on this year's Forbes billionaires list, with an estimated net wealth of US$26.5 billion.
Last month, the company's chief operating officer William Weidner said the Marina Bay resort, which is slated to open in late-2009, is now expected to cost up to 40 per cent more than projected. The cost was previously estimated at $5.05 billion, including $1.3 billion for the land.
Asked by an audience member yesterday why Sands chose Singapore to build a resort, Mr Adelson said: 'This will be a duopoly, and any place we can have a duopoly will be a very profitable but very high investment.
'We will have more space in our integrated resort than rooms like this in the top 30 or 40 hotels in Singapore combined. So we'll be able to see some 30,000 people simultaneously, which will attract the biggest meetings on Earth, which is primarily what the government wants.'
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