Las Vegas Sands Fails to Win Over Texas Lawmakers With Sports Betting Efforts

"A big casino company tried to push Texas lawmakers to let them open in Texas. It didn’t work" is the headline appearing in the Denton Record Chronicle on Wednesday. 

Las Vegas Sands Corp. made a big lobbying bet this past legislative session to try to convince lawmakers to ask voters to amend the state constitution to allow for gambling.

It was actually Texas Monthly's Forrest Wilder who broke down how things transpired. 

Sands, one of the biggest casino-and-resort companies in the world, with $11.3 billion in revenue in 2024, was founded by the late Sheldon Adelson.  He died in 2021 and, during much of his life, was a GOP kingmaker and one of the party's biggest donors.

Hi widow Miriam picked up where he left off, donating more than $100 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidental campaign. Big checks have opened doors for the Adelsons—in Asia, in Vegas, in Washington, D.C. 

But Texas? 

From Wilder's piece: 

Now Adelson was bringing her playbook to Texas. By the time of the town hall, she had loosed a small part of her fortune on an army of lobbyists, dozens of state political campaigns, and a relentless TV advertising push urging legislators to “let Texans vote on destination resorts.”  

At the town hall, the residents of Irving had brought their pitchforks, but whether they’d use them would, perhaps, depend on the performance of Sands’ man in Texas, Andy Abboud, a pugnacious sixtysomething with stylish glasses who once ran the Harris County GOP. His task wasn’t easy. In late 2023, Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont had bought a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks. Six weeks before the town hall, they’d alienated the team’s fan base in the most spectacular fashion, by trading away 26-year-old sensation Luka Dončić, a beloved superstar with an affection for his adopted hometown. Overseeing the wildly unpopular trade was like introducing oneself to Texas by peeing on the Alamo. 

After a city councilman dutifully read Abboud’s lengthy bio for almost four minutes, Abboud came onstage to enthusiastic boos. Over the next two and a half hours, he tried to convince the crowd that they had it all wrong. Sands wasn’t the problem; it was the solution. Texas, he said, was the “largest illegal gaming market in the world,” with an estimated $53 billion in illicit gambling. Texans were playing slots on video terminals in convenience stores and placing illegal bets on sports on their phones. This unregulated market yielded no revenue for the state and preyed upon the vulnerable. 

Sports betting legalization in Texas was already on thin ice with a far-reaching scandal that rocked the Texas Lottery.