Bloomberg – Billionaire Sheldon Adelson said he is considering building individual integrated resorts in major European cities, 10 days after abandoning a plan to construct a $30 billion mega-resort in Spain. “I’m looking at a different model of doing Singapore-like or Japan-like or Korea-like individual IRs in individual cities,” Adelson said in an interview in Herzliya, Israel yesterday. “We will just take the major cities in Europe and see whether or not there is a possibility to pursue that.” Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), the world’s largest casino operator, said Dec. 13 that it was dropping plans for what…

Independent.ie – Former England captain David Beckham has signed on to help promote Las Vegas Sands’ properties in Singapore and the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau. Sands said it hoped to cash in the retired footballer’s popularity in the region. The Las Vegas-based company is the largest casino operator in Macau, the center of the modern day gambling world. The deal may help Sands win attention in mainland China, where casinos are illegal and casino advertising is also banned. Football is hugely popular in China. In November Beckham posed for photographs with 100 children at the Venetian Macau and gave…

CNBC – In the 1800s, Portuguese colonists legalized gambling on a sleepy Chinese island called Macau. That once-lolling backwater has become a glittering center for tourism in Asia, with an estimated $40 billion to $45 billion in revenue this year, according to Union Gaming Advisors, a Las Vegas based consulting firm. Nearly two centuries later, Matsu, another island formation off China’s coast, wants to grab a piece of Asia’s rapid growth in gaming. But this time, big investors such as Bill Weidner, the former president of Las Vegas Sands, are leading the resort development. (Weidner had a bad break with…

iGaming Business – Gamblers in the Scottish city of Glasgow spent over £800 million (€956.1 million/$1.3 billion) on fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) over the past year. According to the Herald newspaper, a total of £1,400 in bets per capita was played on FOBTs in Scotland’s biggest city in 2011-12. In addition, new figures also showed a 20% rise in the amount of betting shops since gaming laws were loosened in 2005. Glasgow is now home to 250 betting shops, up from 210 shortly after the change in law around eight years ago. Campaigners have put the rise in the…

Land-based gaming operator Caesars Entertainment Corporation has confirmed that its subsidiary, Caesars Entertainment Operating Company, has agreed to acquire the non-gaming assets of the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel in the US state of New Jersey in a bankruptcy auction. The takeover is still reliant on approval from the bankruptcy court. While the Caesars deal includes the acquisition of the real property, the Atlantic Club’s gaming assets are being acquired by another buyer. The Atlantic Club’s current owner indicated that it plans to close the site on January 13, 2014, with Caesars expecting to close the purchase of the property shortly…

The American Gaming Association – In recent years, thousands of “Internet sweepstakes cafes” have sprung up in storefronts, gas stations and convenience stores in more than a dozen states. Carefully designed to take advantage of state sweepstakes laws and to avoid state antigambling laws and gambling licensing restrictions, Internet sweepstakes cafes are estimated to earn more than $10 billion a year with games that closely mimic the experience of traditional slot and video poker machines. The cafes advertise and sell a product — usually Internet time or long-distance telephone minutes — that the gambler does not actually want. . ….

New York Post – Hard Rock International is in deep talks to buy Atlantic City’s troubled Revel Casino, two sources close to the situation told The Post. The 20-month-old money-losing Revel, which has been through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization this year, said last month it had hired Moelis & Co. to explore strategic alternatives. It started looking for a buyer in June, The Post reported exclusively at the time. Orlando, Fla.-based Hard Rock, whose eight casinos contribute to total corporate revenue of roughly $4 billion, has been looking to establish an Atlantic City presence. In September 2012, it canceled…

Spectator.co.uk – The puritan, as devotees of Baltimore’s finest know, is greatly exercised by the fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying themselves. Ed Miliband is a puritan. And a hopeless, nagging, fish-faced puritan at that. A ninny, in other words. The Labour leader has a rare gift. He knows, you see, how you should spend your money. What’s more, if you fail to spend your cash in the proper Miliband-approved manner he thinks he should be – nay is! – entitled to coerce you into changing your miserable behaviour. Of course he is not alone in that. Many politicians…