At last, MGM Resorts International and the Orix Corp. have secured the final approvals necessary to develop a $10 billion integrated resort (IR) in Japan. The complex will include the first-ever Japanese-based casino, and will be located on a tract of land on Yumeshima Island in Osaka Bay.
According to GGRAsia, the word came down on September 22 from the Japan Tourism Agency, under the aegis of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The IR is expected to open in the fall of 2030.
Bill Hornbuckle, president and CEO of MGM Resorts, said last month that he would travel to Japan before the end of September to “sign the final two agreements … an implementation agreement and a lease.”
Osaka’s IR District Development Plan was approved in principle in April by central government authorities; a revised agreement with a later opening date was filed on September 8. Inside Asian Gaming reports that Tetsuo Saito, of the Ministry for Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, announced the final approval.
Osaka may invest $174.6 million of public money for land improvement at Yumeshima Island in Osaka Bay. Once the land remediation is complete, sometime in the spring of 2025, construction will begin.
Once complete, the complex will have three hotels with a total of 2,500 rooms; 730,000 square feet of meeting and convention space; and other tourist attractions. Meanwhile, Hornbuckle says the gaming floor at the IR will be reduced by 20 percent to 25 percent.
“The original project … is about 20 to 25 percent less GFA (gross floor area),” he said last month. “We refused to move the budget. I refused to reduce the size of the casino. So it’s complicated, but we got there.”
IR complexes with gaming were approved by the Japanese parliament in December 2016, during the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a strong proponent of casinos as a way to boost tourism. Covid-19 slashed global interest in the nascent market, which analysts once said could be as important as Macau.
In Hornbuckle’s view, “If you think about the marketplace, we’ll probably be the only casino for a very long time in Japan. I’m extremely excited about the potential of this, and the kicker is (Osaka) is closer to Shanghai, Beijing and the northern China cities than Macau.”
MGM Resorts is the majority owner of Macau gaming operator MGM China Holdings Ltd. MGM and Orix will each own 42.5 percent of the property, leaving 15 percent for a group of smaller investors.
A total of three IR licenses were made available during the first phase of casino development. A second IR proposal, from Nagasaki prefecture, is still under review by the central government.
