Mystery Solved, Kind of: Sheldon Adelson Owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal

After weeks of secrecy and media outrage, it has finally been confirmed that billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Ever since news broke that a mysterious company named News + Media Capital Group LLC had purchased the Review-Journal for $140 million, online gambling sites in the US have been abuzz with the question of who the anonymous buyer was. Newspapers, TV stations, politicians, and even the Review-Journal staff themselves angrily called for the new owner to reveal himself.

Finally, the mystery owner has been unmasked, thanks to super sleuthing by Fortune magazine. As many had guessed, Sheldon Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Sadly, the great reveal gives no closure to the bizarre story. Instead, it just begs many more questions. The chief being: Why did Adelson want to hide his identity in the first place?

More questions need to be answered now that it’s known that Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal

It is rather head-scratching that Adelson owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, given the billionaire’s history of suing the press, a flat out statement in which he said that “I don’t like journalism”, and his saying in a recent interview that he has “no personal interest” in the Nevada paper. While he does own a popular Israeli paper, that can be credited to the fact that he’s zealous supporter of the country.

So why did the owner of The Venetian Las Vegas go to such great lengths to dissuade US gambling news from thinking that he’d purchased the publication? The most popular theory is that it has to do with his ardent support of the Republican party, for which he’d hosted a presidential debate at his casino resort just this week.

It’s hard to think that the Review-Journal was a financial investment, given that New Media Investment Group—the previous owners of the paper—had paid $38 million less than Adelson had. A desire for political influence is the more logical motivator for the far-right businessman, who’d like nothing more than to see a Republican president in office.

Given the shadiness of the deal and Adelson’s extreme efforts to go unidentified, however, it’s difficult to believe that the people of Nevada’s votes will be swayed by such an obviously corrupt publication.