Viva Eurovegas!

Sheldon Adelson is an extraordinarily wealthy man. Self-made, "Forbes" magazine ranked him as the sixteenth richest person in the world in 2011. Chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, Spain may finally be on the point of receiving some of his colossal wealth.

Adelson is the man behind Eurovegas. Originally intended to be located in Catalonia near to Barcelona, the location has shifted. Madrid is now likely to be the beneficiary of a project that would create a tourist and gambling resort in the style of Las Vegas. Barcelona has been ruled out because plans for enormous skyscrapers would have posed a safety risk, given that the site would have been close to El Prat airport. Madrid, it would seem, doesn't pose such a risk.

The figures for Eurovegas are impressive. It would comprise six casinos, twelve tourist complexes each with up to 3,000 hotel places, restaurants, museums, convention centres, attractions and no doubt other things. Its cost would be in the region of 17,000 million euros. It would create 260,000 jobs and would, when completely finished, attract 11 million tourists annually.

Adelson has yet to finally decide whether to go ahead, but Eurovegas is becoming more of a probability, its first phase to be completed by 2016 and the whole project to be finished by 2022. If the numbers stack up, you would think that politicians would be lining up to bite his hand off.

There are plenty of people of course who would argue with the figures. What they can't argue with is that Las Vegas Sands has been extremely successful in developing similar resorts in Las Vegas itself and also in Macao and Singapore. Opponents might argue that Mr. Adelson is inflating the figures, but the investment required would not seem to be a deterrent given investment elsewhere, while returns have been such that the Macao project realised a payback in its first year of operation. This is a serious businessman, whatever people might think of him.

It is what people think of him that might yet scupper Eurovegas. Adelson hasn't exactly escaped the attention of courts, including the Nevada Supreme Court, but he has fought allegations to the extent that the "Daily Mail" was forced to pay out four million pounds in damages for libel. Accusations that were levelled by "The Mail" have kind of been echoed in Spain. A judge, José Manuel Gómez Benítez, who is a senior figure with the General Council of the Judiciary, has said that Eurovegas would be a "source of corruption and mafia-style activities" and that it would be "difficult to control" (I quote from a report from the EFE news agency of 12 July this year.) Benítez's position was in contrast to that of the director of Catalonia's anti-fraud office who praised the Eurovegas project, not that this seems to have done much good as Barcelona has been given the boot.

Even without the controversies that have attached themselves to Mr. Adelson, Eurovegas has always been and will remain a highly controversial project. It is one, for example, that places the Partido Popular up against the church (and Madrid is run by the PP with former prime minister Aznar's wife in charge). The church charity Caritas has been one of the most outspoken critics of the probably doomed Gran Scala project near Zaragoza. Yet for all that the church might disagree with gambling, the Spanish are one of the most gambling obsessed people in Europe, largely, one presumes, because of the vast amounts that are spent on lotteries.

But Eurovegas would be less a project for Spanish visitors than it would be for tourists from overseas: from European countries, from Russia (which might just set some alarm bells going) as well possibly from the Middle East and even China given that Chinese tourism to Spain is expected to increase significantly. And tourism from the US couldn't presumably also be ruled out.

The project would clearly stand or fall on its ability to generate the number of visitors being spoken about, but who's to say that it wouldn't. One doesn't know how the annual eleven million is arrived at, but it would be stupid to believe that an operation as successful as Las Vegas Sands doesn't have a sound idea as to the numbers.

There's a long way to go yet for Eurovegas and it will be the subject of intense debate, but one thing it has going for it is that in Madrid it probably won't be faced with a xenophobic attitude to foreign investment. Imagine what would happen in Mallorca, where the garlic and crosses would be brandished at the very mention of such a project.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.