On the desk today · Las Vegas Sands
The company is called Las Vegas Sands. It doesn't operate in Las Vegas. It earns $13 billion a year in Macao and Singapore.
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The Casino Company That
Left Las Vegas
Sheldon Adelson was the son of a taxi driver from Dorchester, Massachusetts. He grew up poor. He dropped out of college. He started more than 50 businesses before he found the one that stuck. In 1979, he founded COMDEX — a computer trade show that became the largest technology convention in the world. He sold it in 1995 and used the proceeds to buy The Sands — a fading hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
He tore it down and built The Venetian in its place — a mega-resort with 4,000 suites, a canal running through a replica of St. Mark’s Square, and a convention center larger than anything Las Vegas had ever seen. The Venetian opened in 1999 and changed the Strip. But Adelson was already looking somewhere else.
I stood in the lobby of Marina Bay Sands last spring — the Singapore hotel with the rooftop infinity pool that looks like a surfboard balanced across three towers. The lobby was full of Chinese businessmen, Indian families, Australian tourists, and Singaporean regulars. The casino floor was packed. The room rates started at $500 a night. And the building — a single property, one address — generates more EBITDA than most publicly traded hotel companies produce across their entire portfolios.
In 2004, Adelson opened Sands Macao — the first Las Vegas-style casino in the former Portuguese colony that had recently been returned to China. It was a gamble on a thesis that the rest of the industry doubted: the Chinese middle class was growing, and millions of people within a short flight of Macao would want to gamble. By 2007, he had opened The Venetian Macao — at the time, the largest casino in the world. Macao’s gaming revenue surpassed the entire Las Vegas Strip by 2006 and has never looked back.
In Singapore, Adelson won the bid to build Marina Bay Sands — a $5.5 billion integrated resort that opened in 2010. Singapore granted only two casino licenses. Adelson got one. The property became the most profitable single casino in the world.
Adelson died on January 11, 2021, at 87. His widow, Dr. Miriam Adelson, became the controlling shareholder. Later that year, the estate sold every Las Vegas property — including The Venetian Resort — for $6.25 billion to Apollo Global Management and VICI Properties. The company called Las Vegas Sands no longer operates in Las Vegas. It kept the name. It kept Asia. It kept the cash flow.
Robert Goldstein, chairman and CEO since Adelson’s death, now runs the company from Las Vegas — a headquarters with no local operations. In fiscal 2025, LVS reported $13.0 billion in net revenue across six properties in two countries. Operating income was $2.82 billion. Net income attributable to LVS was $1.63 billion — $2.35 per diluted share. Consolidated adjusted property EBITDA was $5.2 billion. Marina Bay Sands alone generated $2.92 billion in EBITDA — 56% of the company’s total — from a single building. The Macao portfolio contributed the remaining $2.31 billion from five properties.
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Make sense?
That $2.92 billion from Marina Bay Sands — from one building — is the number that makes the rest of the story make sense. Adelson didn’t leave Las Vegas because the Strip was failing. He left because Singapore and Macao were better. Marina Bay Sands operates under one of only two casino licenses in Singapore — a government-granted duopoly that no competitor can enter without a license that doesn’t exist. The property serves as a convention center, a luxury hotel, a high-end shopping mall, and a casino — all under one roof. Its EBITDA grew 42% in fiscal 2025. It now generates more cash from one property than most gaming companies generate from all of theirs.
The stickiness is the license. In Macao, casino concessions are granted by the government to a small number of operators — currently six. In Singapore, there are only two. These licenses are not available on the open market. You cannot build a competing casino without one. And the licenses come with long terms and enormous capital requirements — Adelson invested more than $15 billion across his Asian properties. The barriers to entry are not just financial. They are governmental. The toll booth is the license itself.
The pricing power in Singapore is extreme. Marina Bay Sands can charge $500 to $2,000 a night for hotel rooms, take a percentage of every dollar wagered in the casino, and collect rent from luxury retailers in the attached mall. The property sits adjacent to the Marina Bay Street Circuit, where the annual Singapore Grand Prix fills the hotel at peak rates while the casino operates at full capacity. No competitor can replicate this — because no competitor has a license to build a second Marina Bay Sands.
The flywheel runs on Asian wealth creation. China’s middle class now exceeds 400 million people. India’s is growing faster. Southeast Asia’s economies are expanding. And Macao — the only place in China where casino gambling is legal — sits at the center of that demand. In 2025, The Londoner Macao delivered $778 million in EBITDA, up 43% year over year, driven by the completion of renovation investments. LVS repurchased $2.25 billion of its own stock during the year — funded by free cash flow, not debt. Goldstein said it plainly in the fourth-quarter results: “We remain enthusiastic about our opportunities to deliver growth in both Singapore and Macao, as we realize the benefits of our market-leading capital investment programs.”
WHY THIS WORKS
Government-granted licenses are the moat. Two casino licenses in Singapore. Six concessions in Macao. No new competitors can enter without a license that isn’t available. The toll booth is the permit itself.
Marina Bay Sands generates $2.92 billion in EBITDA from one building. 56% of the company’s total cash flow from a single property. The most profitable casino on earth, protected by a duopoly license in one of Asia’s wealthiest cities.
$13 billion in revenue from six properties in two countries. Concentration is the strategy — not diversification. LVS doesn’t spread thin. It builds the largest, most expensive integrated resorts in the markets with the strongest demand and the highest barriers to entry.
$2.25 billion in share repurchases in 2025. The cash flow funds capital return, not expansion for expansion’s sake. Net income grew 12% to $1.63 billion while the share count shrank.
Sheldon Adelson was the son of a taxi driver who dropped out of college and started 50 businesses. He founded a computer trade show, sold it, and bought a fading casino on the Las Vegas Strip. He tore it down and built The Venetian. Then he looked east. He opened the first Las Vegas-style casino in Macao. He built the most profitable casino in the world in Singapore. And when he died in January 2021, his estate sold every property in Las Vegas — the city whose name is still on the building — and kept the two markets where the money actually was. Today, the company called Las Vegas Sands earns $13 billion a year and not a dollar of it comes from Las Vegas. The name is a monument. The cash flow is in Asia.
