Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: Inside the Casino Magnate’s $30 Billion Fortune

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino magnate with an incredible ‘rags-to-riches’ story, epitomizes the American Dream.

In January 2021, at the time of his death, Sheldon Adelson’s net worth exceeded $30 billion.

The name Sheldon Adelson has long been synonymous with the casino industry. However, the famous businessman started his successful career long before he acquired his first casino, managing dozens of businesses beforehand.

Keep reading to learn more about the inspiring journey of Sheldon Gary Adelson and how built such a tremendous fortune.

Sheldon Adelson’s Net Worth Breakdown:

Sheldon Adelson’s business career has been nothing short of remarkable.

At a very young age and prompted by difficult beginnings, Adelson joined the business world. After many failed and merely successful attempts, he finally managed to become incredibly successful (and rich) with his trade show business, and from this point forward, his net worth consistently remained in the billions range.

His career hasn’t been one without challenges. The volatility in the company’s stock as well as his extremely diverse portfolio makes it difficult to pinpoint his exact net worth when he died in 2021.

Nevertheless, our detailed research helped us come up with a comprehensive breakdown of his main assets and stake in different companies.

5 Fun and Interesting Facts about Sheldon Adelson

1. Self-Made Beginnings: Born to a low-income family, Adelson’s journey from selling newspapers in Boston to owning a billion-dollar casino empire exemplifies the “rags-to-riches” story. His entrepreneurial spirit started early, and by 12, he was working to support his family.
2. COMDEX Pioneer: Before his casino ventures, Adelson founded COMDEX, one of the largest computer trade shows in the 1980s and 90s, eventually selling it to SoftBank for over $800 million. This marked his entry into billionaire status.
3. Philanthropic Contributions: Through the Adelson Foundation, he donated millions to health, education, and Israeli initiatives, including the Birthright Israel program, which sends young Jewish adults to Israel, and Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
4. Architect of “The Venetian”: Adelson’s vision for the Venetian in Las Vegas was inspired by a trip to Venice. The resort includes replica gondolas and Venetian architecture, creating a unique thematic experience that helped set his properties apart.
5. Political Influence: Known for his significant political donations, Adelson was one of the largest donors to Republican campaigns in recent history, supporting candidates and initiatives that aligned with his conservative beliefs. He played a notable role in funding campaigns for GOP candidates and causes over several election cycles.

Latest News & Updates

Although Sheldon Adelson passed away in early 2021, his legacy and influence remain strong.

His wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, has continued their philanthropic work and political advocacy, recently donating substantial funds to conservative causes and upholding his legacy within Las Vegas Sands.

Today, Las Vegas Sands, the company he helped build, remains a significant player in the casino and hospitality industry, although it has been pivoting to new investments outside the U.S. due to recent casino sales in Las Vegas.

Early Life and Career

Sheldon Gary Adelson was born on August 4, 1933, in Boston, Massachusetts. When asked about his childhood, Adelson used to say that his family was so poor, that they couldn’t afford rags, so the description ‘rags-to-riches’ didn’t apply to him.

“I came from the other side of the tracks. In fact, I came from so far on the other side, I didn’t know the tracks existed. I would have been a rags-to-riches story, except my parents couldn’t afford the rags. So I’m a less-than-rags-to-riches story.” – he said.

Young Sheldon’s father, Arthur Adelson, was an immigrant who worked as a cab driver, and the small family lived in a two-room apartment with the children sleeping on the floor. His mother, Sarah Adelson, was an immigrant from England who ran a knitting shop.

Having started in a financially struggling environment, Sheldon Adelson started working at just 12 years old. He reportedly borrowed $200 from his uncle and invested it into a newspaper-selling license in Boston, which he did for a couple of years. Four years later, he borrowed and invested $10,000 (a fortune at the time) to start his first business – a candy vending machine company.

As for his education, Sheldon Adelson enrolled in the City College of New York but dropped out soon after to join the United States Army. Upon his return from the army, he started several other businesses, slowly growing his net worth until he reached millionaire status. He reportedly managed around 50 businesses in his career, with the early companies including selling magazine ads, mortgages, toiletries, and windshield de-icers.

Sheldon Adelson was married twice. He married Sandra Adelson in the 1970s and adopted her three children from a previous marriage, but divorced her in 1988 and married Miriam Farbstein (now Miriam Adelson) in 1991, with whom he had two children.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: Early Days of an Explosive Career

After many tries and failures, Sheldon Adelson’s life turned around when he founded a computer trade show named COMDEX in 1979. Following this success, his net worth started growing significantly until at one point, it reached a new million dollars daily.

However, the businessman’s life hasn’t been without challenges. He has lost the bulk of his fortune at least once, only to regain it again before his untimely death. Let’s see how his story progressed over the years.

COMDEX

In 1973, Adelson launched Interface Group, a business that later expanded to include a trade show venture. In 1979, he partnered with four entrepreneurs to start a new business in the computer industry: the COMDEX trade show, short for Computer Dealer Expo.

It took the partners a few years to turn this business into a highly profitable venture in the computer industry and, within a decade, COMDEX made fortunes for big names like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who used it to debut their newest products.

The trade shows became some of the most attended worldwide in only a decade.

When the COMDEX shows business became one of the biggest such ventures worldwide, the partners decided to sell both the trade shows company and Interface Group to SoftBank Corporation, the brainchild of Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son.

The sale to Softbank Corporation, which took place in 1995, netted them $862 million, out of which Adelson reportedly earned over $500 million.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: A Well-Timed Pivot to Gambling

At the time of his death, Sheldon Adelson was a billionaire and the acting chairman of Las Vegas Sands. His fortune stemmed mostly from his stake and earnings from Las Vegas Sands Corp, the largest casino company in the United States, which he built after the sale of COMDEX.

How did it all begin, though?

In 1989, Sheldon Adelson bought the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, a cultural hub that hosted major stars like Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, reportedly spending $128 million (though Adelson’s stake hasn’t been disclosed). The following year, he and his partners built the only privately owned convention center in the US named the Sands Expo and Convention Center.

By 1995, after the sale of COMDEX and with over $500 million in his pocket, Sheldon Adelson took a $1.5 billion bank line of credit and bought out his partners, working on a massive project all on his own. He spent $1.5 billion demolishing and building the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in the place of the original Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

He was inspired by his visit to Venice, and he hired craftsmen to make detailed renderings of the features seen in Venice architecture including the Piazza San Marco, Doge Palace, Rialto Bridge, and Campanile Tower.

Using his growing fortune and success in the casino industry, Adelson invested another $1.9 billion in the 3,000-suite Palazzo hotel, which is connected to the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino was a Venice-themed resort hotel and casino and one of the most luxurious establishments in the area. It counted 4,000 suites and, following the building of an adjacent Palazzo Hotel, this became the largest hotel in the world.

By 1999, the Venetian counted 8,000 suites and a casino floor that expanded over the square footage of two football fields.

The incredible success of the Venetian in Las Vegas would become the basis for the astonishing growth of Adelson’s business as it quickly grew to become an empire in the gambling industry.

“The opening of The Venetian in 1999 was the real beginning of our company’s story, and it also launched a new era of integrated resort development around the world. The Venetian’s success in Las Vegas, and particularly our convention-based business strategy, would end up being the basis for our company receiving coveted licenses in Macao and Singapore.” – Adelson told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Not only did the Venice-themed resort hotel include features from the city’s architecture, but it even replicated the gondola experience, which was an immediate success with visitors.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: Expanding LV Sands to Make Billions

The Las Vegas Sands Corp went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2004, the same year Sheldon Adelson started working on his Macau casino.

The initial listing price of the Las Vegas Sands stock was $29 per piece, with 6.8% of the corporation being put on the market. At this point, Sheldon Adelson had 87.9% ownership of the company, with the remaining 5.3% belonging to directors and management.

The company’s public offering made Sheldon Adelson a billionaire and, over the next 12 months, his net worth grew by $1 million per hour, even including weekends.

After the IPO, Adelson spent around $265 million to build the Sands Hotel in Macau. This was Asia’s first American-style casino, which thrived up until the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the next few years, Sheldon Adelson spent a fortune building various convention centers and casinos in Las Vegas and around the world. His initial Las Vegas Sands project turned into a corporation and an umbrella for casinos in Macau, Singapore, and Cotai.

In August 2007, Adelson opened the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel in Cotai and announced that he planned to create a concentrated resort area named the Cotai Strip, similar to the Las Vegas Sands counterpart. His idea was to invest $12 billion to open more hotels and build 20,000 hotel rooms on the Strip.

In 2006, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands was given a license to construct a resort in Marina Bay, Singapore, which cost around $6 billion and opened in 2010.

Today, Las Vegas Sands operates the following properties, among others:

• Venetian Las Vegas
• Palazzo Las Vegas
• Sands Expo & Convention Center
• Marina Bay Sands in Singapore
• Sands Bethlehem
• Venetian Macao (Sands Macao)

In 2019, the company reported $13.7 billion in revenue with Adelson as the main stakeholder. However, in 2020, due to the pandemic, the casinos and other properties in the Las Vegas Sands portfolio recorded their worst year in history, with revenues going down 97%.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: How Much of LVS Did He Own?

In 2020, Sheldon Gary Adelson controlled 54% of LVS (Las Vegas Sands). Over the years, he had sold a significant portion of his stock. For instance, in 2005 and 2006, Adelson sold about $3 billion worth of LVS stock, and his wife exercised a warrant to buy 87.5 million common shares at $525 million in 2012.

The global recession of 2008 seriously impacted Sheldon Adelson’s net worth as the LVS shares went into freefall. He lost $4 billion during the first year of the recession and by 2009, he had lost around 28 billion dollars, leaving him with a net worth of $2 billion. However, his business recovered by 2011, building his net worth to exceed $20 billion.

In 2021, when Sheldon Gary Adelson passed away, his 54% stake in the company would be worth around $15 billion based on a market capitalization of $28.75 billion. Today, his stake is worth well over $20 billion with a market capitalization of LVS of $37.50 billion.

In addition to his stake in the business, Sheldon Adelson earned even more money from his massive salary as the chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Philanthropic Endeavors

In addition to being a giant in the hotel industry, Sheldon Adelson has been widely known for his philanthropic (and political) contributions, most of which were through the Adelson Foundation, which he founded in 2007. His private charity’s main focus was on healthcare, and he was also a fierce supporter of the Jewish people and Israel.

For instance, Adelson gifted $410 million to the Birthright program, which provides funding for young Jewish adults to visit Israel. He also donated $50 million to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum and Memorial based in Israel, and made significant donations to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam were awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship in 2008 by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution.

After Adelson lost one of his sons from his marriage with his first wife, Mitchell Adelson, to a drug overdose, he became dedicated to the cause of fighting addiction. In 1993, he opened his first drug abuse clinic in Tel Aviv and, in 2000, the Adelsons opened the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Clinic for Drug Abuse Treatment and Research in Las Vegas.

Political Donations and Activities

Sheldon Adelson was originally a Democrat but switched to a Republican during the early 2000s and he has since been one of the party’s biggest donors. Even after his death, his wife, Miriam Adelson, seems to have taken up the cause, spending millions on various conservative causes.

In 2004, Sheldon Adelson donated $250,000 to George W. Bush’s reelection campaign. In 2008, he was the main backer of Freedom’s Watch, the conservative political advocacy group.

In 2012, Adelson donated to a political action committee called “American Solutions for Winning the Future”, and supported Gingrich’s presidential campaign. After Gingrich dropped out of the race, he supported Mitt Romney, giving $70 million to Republicans during the presidential race, which was three times more than the previous record.

In 2014, Adelson made another one of his big political contributions when he donated $2.5 million to the Drug-Free Florida Committee and the No on 2 campaign.

Adelson and his wife were also the largest donors to Donald Trump, providing the largest donation for his 2016 campaign, his defense fund against the Mueller investigation, and his presidential inauguration.

In 2012, the casino magnate announced that he would give $100 million to Donald Trump to support his campaign, requesting that Trump move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and allow Israel leeway in the international community, such as letting it annex Golan Heights (Syrian territory). He did both after becoming president.  Trump even seemed to admit that he did these things for the Adelsons directly in a speech at a recent Antisemitism event, saying:

You know Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there and
they were always after [unintelligible]. Soon as I give them something always for Israel as soon as I’d give them something they’d want something else, I say give me a couple of weeks will you please but I gave them the Golan Heights.

Adelson donated $25 million to Trump’s campaign but was still his biggest donor. Adelson and his wife subsequently donated $93 million to Republicans in that same cycle, followed by $82.58 million in 2016 and $123.25 million in 2018. Miriam Adelson has taken on Sheldon’s political advocacy since his death, donating another $100 million to a Donald Trump-supporting PAC. This time, her request for the monolithic donation was for Trump to allow Israel to annex the West Bank (which would be a clear violation of international humanitarian law). The influence of billionaires, corporations, and the rich in US politics in general is staggering but this quid-pro-quo deal is especially blatant.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: Other Investments and Assets

Sheldon Adelson died on January 11, 2021, aged 87. The reported cause of death was complications of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

At the time of his death, Sheldon Adelson was worth over $30 billion. Most of his fortune came from his stake in LVS, but he also had invested in several other businesses and had significant sums invested in assets like real estate.

Other Businesses

In 2015, Sheldon Adelson spent $140 million to acquire The Las Vegas Review Journal, which was the area’s largest newspaper. At the time of the purchase, he used a shell company to conceal his ownership but was eventually revealed as the owner.

The Las Vegas Review Journal is a daily subscription newspaper that has existed since 1909 and remains the largest circulating newspaper in Nevada.

In addition to this newspaper, Adelson was the owner of the Israel Hayom, an Israeli daily newspaper. He reportedly invested at least $50 million in the company.

In 2007, Adelson attempted to buy Maariv, another Israeli daily newspaper, but his attempt failed, so he proceeded with plans to publish a free newspaper to compete with it. This was when he published the first edition of Israel Hayom on July 30, 2007. Four years later, the newspaper became the number-one publication in the country, enjoying a 39.3% weekday readership exposure, beating out Maariv by a wide margin.

However, in 2014, after he invested millions into his daily newspaper, Adelson received the go-ahead to purchase Maariv and Makor Rishon, after which he shared that he no longer owned Israel Hayom.

Sheldon Adelson Net Worth: Real Estate, Yacht, and Private Jet

In the mid-1990s, Sheldon Adelson and his family started acquiring numerous properties in the Malibu Colony neighborhood, which is one of Malibu’s most exclusive areas. In 2013, Adelson purchased two homes in addition to his primary residence in the area, spending $13.3 million. In the following years, he spent over $90 million on other properties in the neighborhood. In 2020, he acquired what was the ninth property in Malibu Colony worth $16.9 million.

In addition to his extravagant real estate presence in Malibu, Adelson and his wife also owned the largest private residence in Clark County in Nevada, which was worth $4 million at the acquisition but its value grew exponentially once they renovated the 44,000-square-foot home.

Other Assets

Adelson also owned a superyacht he called “Queen Miri” after his wife Miriam. The yacht was originally titled Annaliesse in 2004, but he renamed it after he bought it in 2015. It is valued at $70 million.

He also owned an Airbus A345, a privately owned jet that set the record for the longest flight ever to depart from Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel. The jet was worth over $250 million.

What Can We Learn from Sheldon Adelson’s Story?

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire and casino magnate with his remarkable ‘rags-to-riches’ journey, epitomizes the American Dream through his success in various industries. His story teaches us the transformative power of innovation, hard work, and strategic vision.

From his very humble beginnings and a time when he used to sell newspapers and manage a candy vending machine business, Adelson’s entrepreneurial spirit propelled him into the computer industry, where he found his first major success with the creation of the iconic computer trade show COMDEX. His decision to sell COMDEX to Softbank Corporation marked a key moment in his business career, catapulting him into the realm of multimillion-dollar deals, and making him a notable figure in the business world.

Following this strategic sale, Adelson didn’t give up on his dreams or retire to spend his wealth. Instead, he ventured into the lucrative world of hospitality and gaming, following his dream. He acquired his first hotel and subsequently transformed it into an iconic gambling establishment, beating the traditions and placing a tremendous investment and risk into his dream.

His bold investments in Sands Expo and Convention Center, the Sands hotels such as Sands Macao, and other ventures cemented his status as a titan in the casino industry, showing us that identifying lucrative opportunities and mixing this with courage is the recipe for success.

Adelson’s philanthropic endeavors reflect his commitment to giving back and making a positive impact on society. His generous contributions to charitable causes and dedication to advancing medical research and education highlight the importance of leveraging wealth for the greater good. His political donations also exemplify immense power of money in politics.

Adelson’s story serves as a testament to the power of entrepreneurship, dedication and innovation. Through his relentless pursuit of excellence and endless attempts at reaching success, he achieved amazing things, inspiring future generations to dream big.