Results tagged “lasvegassands”

The $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel is finally open for business on Macau's Cotai, and can you believe our local Blue Frog is somewhere in that building? Las Vegas Sands claims the 10.5 million square foot Venetian — twice the size of the Las Vegas original — is the largest building in Asia. Sands' next casino in Asia -- which at US$3.6 billion will be one of the costliest casino-resorts ever -- will open up in Singapore. But reports have come in that the development cost will swell by up to US$1.44 billion due to an Indonesian sand ban. Fuelled by strong growth in gaming revenues, the Macau economy has ballooned 28.9% in the first half of the year.

Even as 85-year-old Macau gambling mogul Stanley Ho is in hospital undergoing treatment for constipation and an injured rectum, the word is out that Macau has overtaken Las Vegas as the world's biggest casino draw. Macau's 22 casinos raked in over US$7 billion last year while Las Vegas' 40 casinos lagged behind at US$6.6 billion.

More people should have listened to analyst Kelvin Tan of Las Vegas Sands, the Nevada-based hotel, gaming and retail corporation. When reports began appearing on various horse-racing websites at the end of October stating that Beijing Jockey Club had been awarded an unprecedented 12-month gambling license, Mr Tan swam against the tide, maintaining that the Chinese government would continue to restrict betting to table games in border casinos. Had his bearish stance been adopted earlier by the main drivers behind the Beijing Jockey Club’s ambitious breeding, training and racing programme -- namely Hong Kong businessman Yun Pung Cheng and his racing director Kevin Connolly -- things might not have taken as dramatic a turn as they did in the last month, when more than 600 thoroughbreds were given lethal injections as fortunes at the club waned. In a country where considerably less humane slaughter methods are widely employed, the mass-euthanasia has been described by the chief executive of the International League for the Protection of Horses as “a tragedy, but not one as bad as neglect, starvation or being sold to work in front of a cart for the rest of your days”. Nonetheless, with the 2008 Olympics looming, it is a major PR blow for animal-unfriendly China, which is having to stage its Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong as a result of being unable to provide adequate quarantine provision. Not to mention a huge blow for the 600 horses who met their maker.