Purpose: This study quantifies the casino-industry-specific intangible assets and brand equity models from a different perspective (relative to Interbrand approach, or EquiTrend approach) to investigate the relationship between advertising expenditure and firms' intangible assets in the casino industry. Design/methodology/approach: This study collected the casino's data from the financial reports during the period of 2007–2018. The proposed model incorporates a brand structure moderator, and the peculiar characteristics (e.g. ΔS, HHI) of the casino industry based on previous research. We constructed three models for dependent variables using Tobin's Q−1. Model (1, 2, 3) as the primary regressions to firms' intangible assets (and thus serving as tests of hypotheses), as depicted in the diagrams of the firm's brand equity in different scenarios. Findings: The results suggest that: (1) advertising expenditure has an adverse effect on firms' intangible assets; (2) the coefficients associated with brand structure dummy variables are both positive and significant; and the adverse effect is stronger for firms with house-of-brand's (HOB) and brand of house (BH) structure than for those with mixed branding structure (BH-HOB hybrid); (3) global brands have higher brand equity than local brands, with higher variance over time. Originality/value: This study gives new evidence of the negative effect of advertising on the casino industry, which primarily reports the adverse effect of advertising in a sinful industry. Meanwhile, the proposed FBBE models can be an efficient tool to monitor a firm's annual brand equity performance with respect to their major competitors in the market.