MGM Resorts International Chairman and CEO James Murren says he expects to open a destination-scale casino resort in Japan “by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics”.
In an interview with Investor’s Business Daily, Murren acknowledged the “complicated process” that Japanese authorities have ahead of them but said he’s confident.
“We have knowledge and information on all of the issues that have to be addressed,” he said, adding that the Las Vegas-based casino giant, which also owns a lucrative casino in Macau and is building a second in the Chinese territory, is willing to work with Japanese partners.
Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party is looking to tourism to boost the country’s ailing economy, and party leaders submitted a legalization bill to the national legislature, the Diet, in December. The government believes the industry could help double foreign visitor arrivals to 20 million by 2020 and 30 million by 2030, while analysts project resort casinos in Tokyo, Osaka and in a targeted handful of regional holiday destinations could generate more than US$40 billion in revenues a year. The prospects have attracted interest from an A-list of global operators: Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts, Caesars Entertainment among them, along with Macau’s SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment and Melco Crown Entertainment and Malaysia-based resort conglomerate Genting.
Lawmakers are expected to begin debating the bill this month, but far from certain that it will be passed in time to meet Murren’s 2020 forecast. Nomura Securities analyst Takashi Kiso expects red tape to tie up the licensing process and recently told Barron’s his firm is assigning no Japan-related value to industry stocks. In contrast, Credit Suisse believes the bill will be passed in June and the first casinos conceivably opened by 2016.
