Spanish Mega-casino Project Shelved By Las Vegas Sands

The Spanish government received some bad news today, after the world’s largest casino operator, Las Vegas Sands Corp. (LVS), announced it was abandoning plans to build the much-anticipated $30 billion mega-resort in Spain in favour of the Asian market. As US billionaire Sheldon Adelson explained in a company statement earlier today:
“Developing integrated resorts in Europe has been a vision of mine for years, but there is a time and place for everything. Right now our focus is on encouraging Asian countries, like Japan and Korea, to dramatically enhance their tourism offering through the development of integrated resorts there.”
Currently, Spain is struggling with a 26% unemployment rate and the “Eurovegas” project, complete with four casino complexes, 12 hotels, nine theatres, three golf courses, and several convention centres  was being touted as a means to help the country’s ailing economy. It had been hoped that the resort would eventually attract an extra 11 million tourists each year, bringing in billions if euros in much-needed revenues.
However, several unresolved criteria still remained which could have scuppered the agreement, including tax rates, as well as Las Vegas Sands seeking an exemption to Spain’s ban on smoking in public places. It would now seem that many of these hurdles could not be overcome, and as Adelson said in the company statement: “[LVS] did not see a path in which the criteria needed to move forward with this large-scale development can be reached. As a result we will no longer be pursuing this opportunity.”
Despite the bad news for the Spanish government, there will also be many interested parties in the country which will welcome the news, such as the Roman Catholic Church, members of Spain’s “indignant” movement against social equality, and the “Eurovegas No” group, whose organizer Ana Sanz, explained last year:
“The numbers which they are selling us are not real. This is a repeat of a growth model based on excessive construction. It is not a source of sustainable jobs. We are going to become a nation of waiters and prostitutes.”