While America burns, Sheldon Adelson is fiddling in the French Caribbean, aboard his mega-luxury yacht. The vessel was moored next to that of James Packer, who welcomed Adelson as guest for his lavish New Year’s Eve celebration. This meeting of the moguls only served to further fuel speculation that Sheldon is cutting a deal with Crown Resorts to buy Venelazzo. If so, it would be the first astute business move Packer has made in the United States, where his previous atttempts to crack the market—especially in Las Vegas—were a shambles, placing bets on every three-legged horse in sight. Of course, Packer would have to get Nevada regulators to overlook that little matter of being unable to get a Sydney casino license …
Remember how casinos in Japan were supposed to be open in time for the 2020 Olympic Games? And how the games were postponed until this year? And how there is still no opening date for the casinos, if ever? Well, the Olympiad is already $7.2 billion over budget and hasn’t been held yet. This exceeds the record, $6 billion overage of the 2012 London games, proving that Olympic incompetence is nothing new. (By percentage, the worst excess was 1992 Barcelona‘s 266% overrun.) Not only is the Japanese government quibbling with the International Olympic Committee over who should pick up the $2 billion of the tab related to Coronavirus postponement, the Nipponese public is getting restive: 34% of survey respondents favor outright cancellation, while another 36.5% want additional delay. 75% think Coronavirus is not going to be tamed anytime in the immediate future. The only recent Olympiad to come in remotely close to budget was Athens in 2004, which goes to show you can’t beat the ancestral home of the games.
