Mike Leven, president of Las Vegas Sands Corp., made an interesting comment that was not pursued enough by those listening to the conference call in the wake of the Sands China results this week. He said the company was having a rethink about its aggressive premium-direct strategy as it was worried about alienating junkets. Sheldon Adelson even said – and, to quote Dave Barry, we swear we are not making this up – that, “We are in active discussion right now since we terminated Steve Jacobs about the wisdom of accentuating the effort for direct premium play.” There is no way that Adelson could not have been the one who pushed that strategy in the first place, so to hear him challenge his own wisdom, albeit at the expense of the departed Jacobs, must mean something serious is going on. Stay tuned.

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