For the present, Las Vegas Sands continues to keep mum regarding a South China Morning Post report that it's trying to sell Sands Macao. Does the old legal maxim, "silence gives consent," still apply? The lack of an outright denial leads me to believe this story is still very much alive. However, Sands' chances of swinging the deal described in the Post appear quite long indeed.

Sands Macao: Priced to stay put.

Sands is reportedly asking $1.3 billion for Sands Macao -- approximately 8X cash flow for a casino-hotel that has been a money spinner from the get-go. However ... Sands would continue to operate the casino and pocket the revenue therefrom, paying a rent that's pegged to the casino's performance. It'd scarcely be an unusual arrangement. Stanley Ho achieved his broad reach, in part, through pacts with other hotel owners who farmed their casinos out to his Sociedade de Jogos de Macau.

But $1.3 billion is pretty steep if you're looking at having to make your nut off of hotel rooms and restaurants. That's a ton of shark's fin soup you'd have to sell. Indexing the casino rent to gambling revenues hardly incentivizes Sands to drive up business at its original Macao casino.

Unless somebody at Sands is thinking way outside the box and offering to pay rent in inverse proportional ratio to what the casino rakes in, but that makes even less sense. Sheldon Adelson would have to be promising massive rents for his mooted sale to pencil out for the buyer. Owning a hotel in Macao without the casino is like getting kissed but not ... you know.

I've been expecting Adelson to float an offer like this for a few weeks now. He wouldn't do it with Venetian Macao unless he could somehow hang onto the convention center as well as the casino. But desperate times are at hand and, seeing as Sheldon's Cotai Strip™ malls aren't finding any takers, Sands Macao may well be expendable.

Ironically, Sands Macao, which was intended as an expedient, low-cost vehicle for getting into the Macanese market was the one opening that Adelson pulled off right. MGM Mirage would have done well to have following a similar route into Macao, instead of taking so long and spending so much money to get all its Peking duck in a row. What would happen if you built a megaresort and nobody came? It looks like MGM Grand Macau, the tail-end Charlie of the Macao market, answers that question.

Bad news for Pennsylvanians. The Associated Press reports that $743 million Sands Bethlehem "has put off finishing the restaurants, entertainment and other non-gambling elements planned there." Can you say "grind joint"? I thought you could. No wonder Sands is projecting such steep (17%) ROI if it's going to open the place as a slot house.