The mystery of who bought The Las Vegas Review-Journal has been solved.

But why Sheldon Adelson, who controls the casino operator Las Vegas Sands, snapped up Nevada's top paper remains unclear. Acquiring The South China Morning Post might have made more business sense.

Mr. Adelson tried to keep his $140 million purchase secret by using a Delaware-based shell company. When asked whether he was the buyer, the casino mogul said he had ''no personal interest'' in the newspaper. For now at least, The Review-Journal employs investigative journalists, so it's no surprise that Mr. Adelson was outed.

But why own a publication with a declining circulation of around 170,000? Mr. Adelson, who got his start selling newspapers on a Boston street corner, is already a big deal in Nevada, and worth some $24 billion, according to Forbes. He's a huge Republican donor and Nevada is an important swing state. Yet The Review-Journal is already on Mr. Adelson's side, having endorsed the Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

More to the point, Vegas represents just a sliver of Mr. Adelson's gambling empire. The $35 billion Las Vegas Sands reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda, of $208 million from its Las Vegas properties in the first nine months of 2015. Sands casinos in the former Portuguese colony of Macau, now administered by China, generated $1.6 billion of Ebitda -- eight times as much, even after a 36 percent drop from the same period in 2014. The United States company's 70 percent stake in the Hong Kong--listed parent of the Macau casinos accounts for more than half of its market capitalization.

And the Macau operations need the most help. The junkets of Chinese businessmen and Communist Party officials that kept casinos humming have ground to a near halt thanks largely to President Xi Jinping's corruption crackdown. Casino gambling revenue in Macau is running 35 percent lower this year than last, and the territory's gross domestic product has shrunk by a quarter.

Macau's secretary for economy recently met with casino operators to gauge their views on the crisis. Ideas like smoking bans and orders to create more family-friendly entertainment were on the table.

For Mr. Adelson, the bully pulpit of a prominent newspaper in Hong Kong, close to the gambling pits of Macau, might do more for business than one in Vegas. But Alibaba, the e-commerce group founded by Jack Ma, just snapped up the Morning Post.

Rob Cox is editor of Reuters Breakingviews. For more independent commentary and analysis, visit breakingviews.com.

December 18, 2015, Friday    The New York Times on the Web
Column: 0    Desk: Dealbook    Length: 413 words

(c) 2015 The New York Times Company