Comdex

Sheldon Adelson built a casino empire starting with a trade show

Sam recounts how Sheldon Adelson started Comdex, an '80s personal-computer trade show, sold it to SoftBank for $1 billion (later renamed CES), and used trade shows as the on-ramp to building the Las Vegas Sands hotel empire.

“The way that he started that was he started this thing called Comdex, which was a trade show. It stood for, it was like personal computers. He started it in the '80s. Eventually he sold it for $1 billion to SoftBank and it was renamed CES.”