The Japanese government under Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has published its so-called basic policy on integrated resorts (IRs), the long-awaited rundown of criteria for operators and jurisdictions hoping to host the country’s first trio of casinos.
According to Inside Asian Gaming, most of the rulebook was issued in October, after being delayed by the Covid-19 outbreak, the August resignation of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and also by bribery allegations associated with a lawmaker involved in IR legislation. Among other things, the completed document lays out health and safety measures to be followed by public officials and representatives of prospective host communities, who must confer on the matter in person, inside government facilities.
Osaka, Yokohama, Wakayama and Nagasaki are among the jurisdictions that have expressed interest in hosting one of the first three IRs. The basic policy lays out five evaluation criteria they must meet in order to help the country reach its goal of 60 million tourists a year by 2030. During his term, Abe was cheerleader-in-chief for IRs, which were first approved by his Liberal Democratic Party-controlled government in December 2016 and have been in the planning ever since.
The government will accept casino plans from local governments from October of next year to April 2022, with the first three IRs expected to open sometime at the end of the decade—a timeline that was considerably pushed back by the coronavirus and the resulting economic crisis.
The policy includes new measures aimed at protecting public health, such as enhanced cleaning and sanitizing protocols for the resort properties. It also includes provisions to help combat problem gambling, a chief concern among the Japanese public, which has never come out in strong support of a gaming industry in the country.
According to a statement from Suga, integrated casino resorts “are an important initiative in order for Japan to proceed as an advanced tourist nation. We are moving ahead with the necessary preparations.” But Suga’s influence may be short-lived, according to Asia Gaming Brief, which reported that in the three short months of his term, the prime minister has gone from “a brilliant start” to rapidly “squandering his strong political position.” He was not elected to a new term, but only to complete his predecessor’s term, and did nothing to change that in his “honeymoon period,” before the new, larger Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan was established. He may not be able to swing a victory in September 2021, especially with the term of the LDP-ruled Diet ending a month later.
“For IR development in Japan, this means that a lot of major issues that may currently appear to be fixed may not be as certain as they seem,” AGB reported.
Meanwhile, the Motley Fool reports that the Las Vegas Sands Corp., which bowed out of the IR bidding earlier this year, could return as part of an all-in Asian strategy. Sheldon Adelson’s company’s chief market is Macau, which contributes about 60 percent of its revenue currently. “While Las Vegas Sands also has operations in Singapore,” the Fool reported, “the nascent Japanese market could still be the biggest plum.”
The Sands Corp. also has its eyes on Texas, the second largest state in the U.S. after Alaska, where casino gaming is still illegal. A Sands lobbyist has called the Lone Star State “a worldwide destination and one of the top potential markets in the entire world.” Adelson has also expressed interest in breaking the market in Brazil.
