(Bloomberg) — Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is selling $2 billion of stock in Las Vegas Sands Corp. so the family can acquire a majority stake in a professional sports team.
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The family already has a binding purchase agreement for a team, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday. The Adelsons will use the proceeds from the offering as well as cash on hand to purchase the team, “subject to customary league approvals.”
The team is an NBA franchise in a major market, and a deal will be announced shortly, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Marc Stein, who writes about professional basketball on Substack, reported that the team is the Dallas Mavericks, which is owned by billionaire Mark Cuban.
A spokesperson for Sands and the Adelsons declined to comment beyond the filing. Cuban and representatives for the Mavericks didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Adelson, an Israeli-born physician, has led the family since her husband died in January 2021. Her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, is president of Sands, which owns casinos in Singapore and Macau.
Despite selling the flagship Venetian resort in Las Vegas to Apollo Global Management Inc. last year, the family retains close ties to America’s gambling capital. They own the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper and the company is still based there.
According to the latest proxy statement, Adelson controls about 433 million shares of Sands, or more than 56% of the total outstanding. The stock being sold represents about 11% of those holdings.
She is worth about $33 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Shares of Sands were down 3.2% to $46.15 in extended trading after initially falling further.
The shares are being marketed from $43 to $45.25 each, according to a term sheet seen by Bloomberg News. That range represents as much as a 10% discount to Las Vegas Sands’s share price of $47.66 at at Tuesday’s close, Bloomberg calculations show.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp. are bookrunners on the sale.
–With assistance from Amy Or and Randall Williams.
(Updates with team in third paragraph.)
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