Sands exploring igaming opportunities, Goldstein reveals
Las Vegas Sands’ new chief executive Robert Goldstein has revealed that the operator is exploring “a few opportunities” to expand into online gambling.
In the operator’s earnings call discussing its fourth quarter and full year results, Goldstein said the operator was exploring a number of options for growth, including expansion in the US land-based market.
“And yes, we’ve looked at digital,” he added. “[It’s] interesting, […] digital is quite a space. And we are exploring opportunities, looking at what might be out there.”
There was “nothing concrete” in the pipeline, he added. Instead, the business was “simply looking, learning, observing”.
“[We] are learning and observing and talking to people. We are nowhere near a decision on that.”
Sands’ founder and long-serving chief executive Sheldon Adelson was seen as the highest-profile opponent of online gambling in the US.
However Goldstein argued that Adelson, who passed away earlier in January, in fact understood and believed in the potential of digital gaming.
“He just simply had this outsized ethical concern about people who couldn’t afford it or people that were too young to use it,” Goldstein explained. “And he wasn’t a believer in the technology could stop that.
“He never questioned the viability of it. He questioned the ability to police it properly, the same way he paid people hundreds of millions of dollars last year because he wanted to. It’s an ethical consideration to Sheldon.”