Las Vegas Sands CEO Praises China With Macau Gaming License Up for Renewal
Photo Credit: Las Vegas Sands is doubling down on its focus on Asia with resorts like the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore (pictured). Flickr / Ming-yen Hsu
Skift Take
Macau is an extraordinarily important gaming market for Las Vegas Sands, and the company’s third quarter earnings call was a giant love fest for China’s gaming regulators. What else are company leaders going to do but schmooze the people in charge of renewing their gaming license?
Now is apparently not the time for Las Vegas Sands leadership to start spouting off what they don’t like about their largest gaming market.
Las Vegas Sands CEO Robert Goldstein and others in the company’s C-suite spent most of the company's third quarter earnings call Wednesday laying out why they aren’t concerned by Chinese gaming regulators’ plan to increase scrutiny on Macau gaming operators. Instead, they repeatedly described regulators there as “very reasonable, very thoughtful, and very fair.”
The investor call was Las Vegas Sands’ first since the company’s stock tanked on news last month regulators were considering a wave of new oversight measures ahead of next year’s license renewals in Macau.
All of Macau’s casino operators are required to rebid for their licenses, as they expire in June 2022. When asked if he could even envision a worst-case scenario where Las Vegas Sands doesn’t get a license renewal, Goldst
