Online Casino, casinos

Sheldon Adelson is an important figure in the international casino industry. This billionaire features among the world biggest fortunes (editor’s note: 6th fortune according to Forbes 2007) and Adelson was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Born in 1933, his father was a taxi driver and his mother ran a knitting store; Sheldon Adelson grew up in a Jewish family in the poor suburb of Dorchester in Boston, in the State of Massachusetts. At the age of 12, he undertook his first efforts in the business world, borrowing 200 dollars to sell newspapers in the street.

Sheldon Adelson is an outstanding entrepreneur and became a mortgage broker before launching  into the profession of investment adviser and then holding the position of financial consultant. In the course of his career, Adelson has created around fifty companies, but certainly one of his greatest achievements is COMDEX. In 1979, he created the Comdex computer trade show (abbreviation of Computer Dealer’s Exhibition editor’s note) which was one of the most important events in the world of computers and was held at Las Vegas. The first convention took place at MGM Grand (today known as Bally’s editor’s note). Over the years, this event became the computer world’s largest gathering. In 1987, 100,000 people from all over the world met at this convention and 125,000 people one year later. COMDEX was even exported abroad and trade shows took place in Europe and Japan. The company’s net profits came to 250 million dollars. In 1995, Adelson parted with his “baby” selling it for the modest sum of 860 million dollars to the Japanese company Softbank. His fortune assured, Adelson decided to go further, by completely dedicating himself to a business sector in full expansion: casinos. His first casino business goes back to 1988 when he purchased the Las Vegas Sands for 128 million dollars from the billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.

Adelson rethought the hotel and casino’s strategy and reinjected 150 million dollars to build a shopping centre from scratch and to carry out large scale work on the hotel. Moreover, a convention centre was opened in the hotel costing 60 million additional dollars, which was to welcome the Interface trade shows (one of Adelson’s associated companies editor’s note). In 1996, Adelson demolished the Sands Hotels & Casino in order to build a casino modelled on Venice. The Venetian opened in 1999. Its architecture is based on the romantic city with a real waterway and gondolas. The Venetian hotel was to become one of the largest complexes in Las Vegas and this casino made front page news in all of the world’s media. A mammoth casino was born. In 2004, the Palazzo with its 3,000 rooms, to the north of the Venetian, rose up out of the ground after having cost almost 1.8 billion dollars. He invested in a concept which was no longer based solely on casino gaming, but on entertainment, by offering concerts, function rooms for conferences, restaurants and shopping centres. With great foresight, Adelson had understood before anybody else the interest of making a complex which was not uniquely based on the casino, but on pleasure and entertainment.

At the head of the prestigious Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Sheldon Adelson saw in Macao the next Eldorado for international casinos. At the time when the goverment of Macao was granting gaming licences to foreign operators, Sheldon Adelson jumped at the opportunity of building a casino. The multimillionaire Stanley Ho reigned supreme for decades, taking advantage of his monopoly position to manage all of Macao’s casinos. However, American competitors like Sheldon Adelson took over his personal territory and market to take his business away from him.  Adelson was the first American to be granted a gaming licence at Macao and created, in 2004, the Sands Macao for a mere 250 million euros. The opening of this gaming temple almost turned into a riot with 30,000 Chinese who threw themselves at the 800 slot machines and the 350 gaming tables. The Sands receives around 20,000 vistors per day and everything has been carefully thought out to please the Chinese, down to the smallest details. Thus, the hotel’s fourth floor does not exist because this figure is equivalent to our unlucky number: 13. Then, Adelson decided to build an identical version of the Venetian in Macao. To complete this project, Adelson spent no less than 1.5 billion euros in order to enable tourists and casino players to find everything in the same place: hotels, conferences, shows, shops, restaurants etc. in short a town within a town. This gigantic investment was paid back in record time (only 18 months! (ed.)) and should produce thousands of millions of dollars of receipts in the future. Experts predict that, between now and 2010, 24 billion dollars will be spent by visitors on entertainment in the former Portuguese enclave. The Venetian Macao casino has a dizzying turnover with its 350 shops, 3,000 suites, 850 gaming tables, 4,500 slot machines, 30 restaurants and a 15,000 seat arena. Entertainment makes up a large part of this turnover and world famous events are hosted by Sheldon Adelson’s casinos. For example, the Venetian Macao offers its Chinese visitors the show Zaia by the Cirque du Soleil or the Blue Man Group at the Las Vegas Venetian casino.

The American magnate doesn’t intend to stop there and is extending his adventure to Singapore where he obtained authorisation to operate a gaming licence.  The Marina Bay Sands, his new gaming establishment in Singapore, cost him 3.5 million dollars. His objective is to create entertainment centres throughout the world, like those found at Las Vegas and Macao. The concept is to offer a range of activities to visitors such as restaurants, discotheques, shopping centres, casino games, theatres and convention centres.  The turnover from the casinos only represents 40% of total turnover and French casinos are copying the American concept, which has been working for decades.

His family clan

Father of five children, Sheldon Adelson has been married since 1991 to Doctor Miriam Ochshorn. Miriam was born at Tel Aviv and is a major specialist in the effect of drugs on the immune system. Miriam’s parents, Menucha and Simha Farbstein, had to leave Poland before the Holocaust resulted in millions of vicitims. Numerous members of her family were not able to escape this tragedy. Miriam studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and gained diplomas in Microbiology and Genetics. During her two years of military service, she worked in the biological research department and continued her medical studies after the end of her national service. Over the years, Miriam Adelson specialised in the treatment of drug addiction. Today, she is at the head of two centres of medical research to fight against drug addiction known as the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Clinics. There are two centres in the world, one in the town of Tel-Aviv, at the Sourasky Medical Center in Israel and a second at Las Vegas in the State of Nevada. These two centres have treated millions of patients suffering from addiction to hard drugs particularly cocaine and heroin. Other clinics financed and directed by the Adelson couple are in their opening phases.

His close links with Israel

Sheldon Adelson is a close friend and an ardent supporter of the former Israelian Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (leader of Likud, centre-right political party (ed.)) Married to an Israeli woman and of Jewish faith, Sheldon Adelson has never hidden his attachment to Israel and is one of its biggest donors. Each year he finances, in payments totalling millions of dollars, the Taglit programmes which help young people, the world over, between the ages of 18 and 26, to visit Israel for the first time.  To celebrate the State of Israel’s 60th annivesary, Adelson made a donation of 60 million dollars. Some of Adelson’s statements have attracted controversy, particularly when he openly criticised the position of the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on the subject of Palestinians (editor’s note: Adelson is one of the AIPAC’s biggest donors). An ardent supporter of the right in politics, he does not mince his words about Israelian politics and more specifically during the pull-out from the Gaza Strip to which he was fiercely opposed.


Sheldon Adelson experienced a dazzling ascent and worked hard to gain his place among the greatest figures of the casino world.  He has built a gigantic empire and amassed a considerable fortune. The world economic crisis of september 2008 made him one of the multimillionaires who has lost the greatest amount of money in such a short time. According to Forbes, 17 multimillionaires lost more than one billion dollars (editor’s note: Warren Buffet is said to have made eight) and Sheldon Adelson is said to have lost 4 billion. His fortune is thought to have fallen from 15 to 11 billion dollars… he has enough money to spend the rest of his life in the greatest luxury and to ensure a comfortable lifestyle to the members of his family, this for several generations.

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