betty: tonight on "titans at the table," i traveled to what many consider the las vegas of the east. macau. this is part of what attracts people here, right? lawrence: yeah. betty: the small territory on the southern chinese coast raked in an unbelievable $45 billion in revenue last year. more than seven times that of vegas. did you ever think macau would surpass las vegas by that much? >> it makes perfect sense. the resorts in macau are world-class compared to las vegas. macau has taken off. pansy: we are talking about the next generation of people from china have become more affluent. betty: siblings lawrence and

pansy ho have become leaders in the macau casino industry thanks to their father, stanley ho. brother and sister have a combined net worth of $7 billion. but for the last decade, they have met stiff competition. from a las vegas billionaire known for constantly betting against the odds. sheldon: they predicted i would not even open. they did not want to believe somebody else could do something better than they could. betty: they underestimated you. sheldon: they grossly underestimated me. betty: sheldon adelson has a net worth of $35 billion. much of that wealth made on his macau casinos. the race for macau pits billionaire against billionaire. all of whom are vying for the attention of the 1.3 billion chinese to the north. macau is an 11-square mile enclave on the southern coast of mainland china.

for over four centuries, it was under portuguese rule. today it is the closest place to china where gambling is legal. in 1962, chinese businessman stanley ho was the first to usher in a new era of casinos in macau. for decades, ho build a gambling empire that raked in billions. he paved the way for other investors to make it big in macau. today, one of those investors is stanley ho's son, lawrence ho. lawrence: my father revolutionized the casino market 40 years ago in macau. he brought in a new style. throughout my career and also throughout my life, it has been about trying to prove myself. betty: it was important to you to prove that you could build a company from scratch? lawrence: yes. definitely. betty: determined to break out of his father's shadow, lawrence partnered with james packer, himself the son of a famous tycoon. together they formed melco crown.

their properties include two extravagant resorts. whose opulent skin loss live opulence gives las vegas a run for its money. lawrence: it is the ultimate destination for urban entertainment in macau. betty: lawrence refers to the "city of dreams" as an integrated resort. where tourists, not only to put their chips on the table but also to spend at high-end boutiques and stay at five-star hotels. what has las vegas inspired in you? how have the casino moguls in las vegas helped you in terms of inspiration in macau? lawrence: many times in asia, a lot of people built slowly and are more conservative. whereas when you go to las vegas, and you see the mega-resorts, the 3000, 5000 rooms, shows and theaters and nightclubs, my philosophy is more along those lines. go big or go home. i think having seen that that is

workable and doable, that is how i developed "city of dreams." betty: big vision. lawrence: big vision, and we need to give people and our customers something they have not seen before. it is always about being more innovative. and being bigger and better. betty: bigger, better, and wetter. part of his vision is attracting customers through live performances, including this acrobatic experience called "house of dancing water." it is the crown jewel of city of dreams. five days a week, 3.7 million gallons of water flow through this custom-built stage as actors dance, dive, and dazzle a captivated audience. building it was a huge gamble. it premiered in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis. lawrence: we went ahead and continue to built out our $250 million "house of dancing waters" show.

it has been a huge success. the fact that we tried these new things that nobody wants to try has really given us an edge. betty: in the beginning, business was far from booming. lawrence ho's first casino opened to disappointing results. it seemed as if his gamble to go big in macau was destined to go bust. but then ho focused on high-stakes vip clients. the tables quickly turned. and last year, revenue topped an incredible $5 billion. betty: are you surprised by how fast this has grown and developed? lawrence: one of the great things happening in the last 10 or 20 years is the growth of the middle income earning bracket in china. because they are at an age where they would like to travel and enjoy life. betty: did you ever think macau was going to surpass las vegas by that much? lawrence: we all knew that was going to happen. ultimately, if you look at geographically -- a lot of our

customers prefer things that are closer. since now the resorts in macau are world-class, comparable to las vegas, it makes perfect sense that, if you look at macau with the five-hour flight time for over one billion people. whereas if you go from new york to las vegas, that is also five hours. betty: while lawrence is bringing lots of glitz and glam and gambling to macau, sheldon adelson says he invented the concept -- in vegas first. now he says he is the one who will conquer macau. sheldon: they vastly and wrongly predicted i would not even open. i would never get it built. and if i got it built, it would not open. and if i open i would be in , bankruptcy immediately. they didn't want to believe someone else could do it better than they did. betty: they underestimated you. sheldon: right. they grossly underestimated me. betty: when we come back, sheldon adelson tells us why he is the real king of macau. ♪

betty: for a man whose business caters to high rollers and big spenders, billionaire sheldon adelson's roots are decidedly unglamorous. he cannot often be seen with his wife. he was born the son of a cab driver in a poor section of boston. adelson first began in the convention business in 1979 when he founded one of the largest technology trade shows. he eventually sold that and other smaller shows for hundreds of millions of dollars. 10 years later, he bought the original las vegas sands hotel, only to demolish it and replace it with the venetian. it is the first integrated resort of its kind. with hotel, casino, shopping centers, entertainment, and exhibition space. sound familiar? in macau, he has built another

venetian almost exactly like it but with more gaming space. the concept is what adelson says made him stand out among other casino tycoons. i was listening to you speak, and you mentioned that, look, what you wanted to build a las vegas in macau. how come no one else saw that? sheldon: i guess that is what visionary is made out of. betty: people thought you were crazy. sheldon: of course. i have been in dozens of businesses. every time i go into business, everybody thinks i am crazy. nobody wants to recognize that doing something different than what people do routinely is viable. nobody wants to recognize that. the only way i could prove it is to do it and succeed. betty: adelson did not just succeed. he dominated. his first resort, the sands macau, was so successful, he

made back in the initial $265 million investment in the first year. sheldon: 30,000 people showed up. more than 30,000, we do not know the exact number, because as they waited to get in, they knocked the doors down. betty: he went on to build a massive 64,000 room stands hotel. and the 2900 room venetian macau. 3, 2, 1. [applause] betty: he plans on adding another property to be completed by the end of 2016. bringing the grand total to over 10,000 rooms. if he has his way, visitors would never leave. sheldon: we are now developing enough retail malls of different types. you can be in 3000, 6000, 12,000 or 15,000 hotel rooms and never leave the building. i will give you a short anecdote.

here, i had a friend of mine from boston that came in with his wife the go to the jubilee show. they came in on thursday. on monday, he said, how is the weather out? i said, you have not been out? he said, why would i go out? everything i want is here. betty: lawrence ho is talking about shows that are coming in. it is hotels and retail, it is restaurants. they are all copying you. sheldon: yes, they are. they are trying to copy me. he is a nice guy comment -- a nice guy, a gentleman. he has no exhibition and convention space. there is not a city in the world that does not want exhibition space and convention space. betty: as many of adelson's peers have noted, it is his very success in macau that has left las vegas in the dust. a point not lost on the billionaire. did you ever think that macau was going to surpass las vegas in the way it has? sheldon: yes.

betty: what convinced you? sheldon: when we first applied in macau in 2002, there was $2.5 billion in gross gaming income. by 2004 when we opened the sands, there was $5.5 billion. betty: $5.5 billion? sheldon: right. in two years. betty: wow. business was already there. i think people were not recognizing it. how did i know it was going to grow? there were 1.3 billion chinese. betty: about 64% of his las vegas sands revenue comes from his macau properties. since opening the sands macau in 2004, he has expanded into other industries. including ferries. bringing people from his resorts in hong kong to macau in high-speed boats. sheldon: what i recognized was one, there was not enough ferry service. so i set up the ferry -- a ferry

company. what do i know about the ferry business? what i know about every business when i go into it. zero. but there's not much i cannot learn. i believe this industry in which we operate, the lodging or gaming industry, i believe it is a supply driven industry. if i put those buildings there, they will come. betty: and they did. sheldon: and they still do. betty: when we come back, the battle for market share pits him against the ho family. not just lawrence, but his sister, pansy ho. she tells us how she is trained -- trying to keep the gaming industry all in the family. pansy: my father paved for the foundation for macau today. we carry that torch. ♪

betty: sheldon adelson may be trying to conquer macau, but

patriarch stanley ho's original empire is far from failing. his company, sjm holdings, operates the most casino tables in macau. nearly 2000. it accounts for nearly one quarter of macau's revenue. we spoke with pansy ho, his daughter. she says gaming in macau is still a family business. you are the richest woman in hong kong. pansy: i don't know how they calculate it, but they say so. [laughter] betty: do you feel, and among your siblings, the fact that you are part of a legendary hong kong family? do you feel like you have that added responsibility? we definitely feel like we have that sort of sense of a legacy from my family's contribution. if you look at it, there were 450 years of portuguese presence in macau. actually helped

create and pave the foundation for macau today in terms of creating the largest industry, the gaming industry of 50 years. we would very much want to help to grow macau to be something that is more exciting and more important. we definitely carry that torch. betty: pansy has about a 27% stake in mgm china, which owns the mgm grand macau property. the casino made $3.3 billion in revenue last year. you have this partnership with mgm. pansy: yes. betty: first off, how is that relationship going? pansy: good. it is going very well. i think this is the moment when we are really resting on our laurels, and we have done fantastically well, especially last year. we are now very snug in the position where we have formed a strong professional team, which really oversees the daily operations.

we have the time and space to consider long-term perspective strategies for the future. betty: of the 30 million visitors who come to macau to roll the dice each year, more than 60% are from mainland china. hong kong is just a one-hour ferry ride. she says business has been evolving. pansy: what has been surprising is the swiftness with which chinese consumers are changing. in many ways, they are not the type of stereotype that we would have thought about the chinese consumer market, their patterns and behavior. this is a very fluid group of people. they are full of curiosity. their requirements continue to change over time. we can already see that happening during the past seven or eight years. betty: pansy ho also runs a company that operates turbo

jets, a high-speed ferry service between macau and hong kong, competing directly with adelson. last year, her ferries transported about 28,000 people a day. pansy: through our past experiences, we have been running the terminals, the ferry terminals. we have that direct experience. portow how to manage the and also how to commercialize the real estate so it can be of great service to these people. betty: that is not how adelson sees it. sheldon: she doesn't like that we are a competitor in the ferries. now, i can't say that i am the ferry expert of the world, but because she got very bitter over the competition, so she has been bitter all this time. betty: coming up, the clash of the titans continues as they look beyond macau for the next gambling mecca. ♪

betty: the explosion of the casino business in macau has been a huge windfall for this tiny chinese territory and the beijing government. casinos paid the government almost $18 billion in taxes and fees in 2013 just to operate in macau. with great success comes a great amount of squabbling. adelson, a man who is not afraid to wade into conflict, whether it is about israel he saw been writes -- sheldon: there is no such history as the palestinian people. betty: or how the gop can take back the white house -- he has seen his share of battles against the ho family. sheldon: there was a meeting of a coalition of the concessionaires. so i sat in on where the meetings. pansy ho was there. it was not a very congenial

environment. betty: she was not nice to you? sheldon: i don't think she was nice to most of the people. she doesn't like that we are competitive in the ferries. i think it is a matter of jealousy. i think they never anticipated that i would succeed. if you go back to when i first opened in 2007 with the venetian, and you look at the clippings, you look at the articles, it was clear they thought i would fail. the day i opened, we opened at around 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening by 7:00 in the morning , we had over 14,000 visitors. listen to this. there were 30 million people visiting macau. we got, last year, 63 million visitations. how can i get 63 million visitations from 30 million visitors? because 30 million visitors went to one of my four properties

twice. betty: it remains to be seen who will claim the crown as king of macau. but for lawrence ho, he says that success sometimes bigger is not always better. some things that happen in vegas should stay in vegas, he says. lawrence: sometimes you lose the experience. in a 3000 room hotel, sometimes people have to walk five minutes or 10 minutes from the elevator just to go to their rooms. for asians, they are not used to that. betty: do you understand the chinese tourist naturally more, because you are chinese versus sheldon adelson or steve wynn? lawrence: that is an advantage that we would have as well. i was born in hong kong. spent time in hong kong and macau. but at the same time was educated in north america. i get a good sense of the best of both worlds.

the formation of melco crown 10 years ago was based on that belief. how do i marry the best of the east with the best of the west? betty: it is easy to see the asian touches when you walk around his properties. the dragons. tzu statue. the feng shui that he incorporates into the layout. lawrence: when we first started, it was all gold and iron metal bars. it resembled the bamboo, but then feng shui came in and said no, no. betty: it has to be real. lawrence: it has to be real. betty: but adelson, who once called himself the richest jew in the world, says there is no monopoly on culture. sheldon: by vast majority, most of our employees are chinese. my chinese dealers and my chinese service people interact with chinese customers. what is the difference? betty: they would say they know the people. they are chinese.

they know what they want. sheldon: i can't be a successful businessman if i don't respect who and what my customer is. the integrated resorts are a commercial enterprise. the measurement of success is the bottom-line profit. why are we several times more profitable than each one of them? betty: some casino watchers warn there is a bubble of profits forming in macau that is about to burst. fears of a smoking ban and stricter visa rules on the chinese have investors worried that the inflow of tourists may dramatically slow down. but rather than wait, these titans are doubling down. they are spending $26 billion on new resorts, doubling hotel capacity. but they won't stop there. these casino titans want to score big in the rest of asia.

lawrence: japan is the holy grail at this stage. japan has pachinkos. pachinkos are like slot parlors. but technically you don't win money, you win prizes. very popular. an amusement type industry. that industry itself is $35 billion. it has a lot of potential. betty: with the olympics slated for tokyo in 2020, the casino industry could win big in japan with all the worldwide publicity. but the government still has to approve. but win, lose, or draw, the se titans have already made a killing in macau. ♪

♪ stephanie ruhle: it has been five years since haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake. >> we lived one of the worst moments in our history. it was an armageddon-like situation. stephanie: the government says the country is moving forward. that haiti is open for business. >> we want to do more. we want to attract more businesses. that will change an entire region in terms of job creation. maybe what we are doing today will show the government that they need to come here and help the people to have roads, to have electricity, to have running water. stephanie: there are people living in the streets, and the country still has horrible infrastructure problems.