Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | December 2010 6 Cover Story I f we’ve learned anything at all from studying Macau government policy as it relates to the gaming industry, it’s this—when it comes to decision making, it isn’t over until it’s over. And even when you think it’s over it may not be over. At the time Inside Asian Gaming went to press, the possibility of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS) getting back its ‘lost’ undeveloped land on Cotai known as Plots 7 and 8 appeared still to be alive. An interesting question is whether Sands China wants to hold on to Cotai 7 and 8 because it desperately and urgently wants to build on them, or whether it wants to hold on to them because it doesn’t like the idea of having Stanley Ho’s casino company SJM as a neighbour. SJM has repeatedly said it covets the site and is making all the right noises to the government about focusing a Cotai project on a more general entertainment theme. That’s in line with the government’s aspirations to focus more on tourism and a little less on gambling. Anyone who looks closely at the history of SJM’s operations and that of its Ho family predecessor STDM, however, will be taking the new ‘family friendly’ incarnation of SJM with a fairly large pinch of sodium chloride. Macau is all about casinos, no matter how much lipstick local politicians like to put on the gaming pig. Big picture And even if SJM were allowed to build a casino with a family friendly face, it doesn’t answer the question of what exactly Cotai is supposed to be. Relatively new Macau-watchers would be forgiven for assuming Cotai was always meant to be the Las Vegas Strip plonked down in the South China Sea. That’s not the case. Those who lived in Macau prior to the boom brought by casino liberalisation in 2002 will be aware that under a government plan drawn up in the early 1990s, Cotai was envisaged as primarily a residential area, supporting 180,000 residents andwith only sufficient hotel and convention facilities to support 40,000 tourists at any one time. In 1999, that Cotai plan was amended and replaced with the casino-heavy zoning we know today. In 2002, reportedly against his initial better judgement, Sheldon Adelson, the Chairman and CEO of LVS, was persuaded to work with the government to turn what was a boggy reclamation area into a new casino zone. Lost the Plot The shenanigans over Sands China’s Cotai land rights do Macau little credit in the wider world Parcelled out—land allocation for gaming on Cotai and Macau peninsula prior to the government’s decision.