Yokohama’s bid for one of Japan’s three new casino licenses could be in jeopardy as a result of a grassroots movement demanding a referendum on the issue.
“Yokohama Citizens’ Group to Decide on a Casino” has collected more than double the number of signatures needed to subject the municipal government’s pro-casino stance to a decision by the city’s residents.
Mayor Fumiko Hayashi, a casino supporter, said that once the signatures are validated she will introduce a referendum ordinance to the city council, whose approval is required to place the issue on the ballot. She has said also that she will halt the bid if a majority of voters express their opposition.
The municipal government, meanwhile, has said it intends to keep the process moving forward by creating a Yokohama Integrated Resort Promotion Council to involve the city’s various stakeholders in the process, local community and business groups and Yokohama City University among them, along with officials with Kanagawa prefecture.
The council, which Hayashi will chair, will be tasked with formulating a resort policy and appointing a selection committee to choose an operator.
The council’s first meeting was slated to be held November 17 to commence discussions as required by the city’s IR Development Act.
In other news, in the region surrounding Osaka, 600 kilometers to the west, the prefecture of Wakayama has become the latest of the country’s local governments to postpone its casino hopes in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
The prefecture now says it will accept proposals from would-be operators until January 15 in line with the national government’s recent Covid-related decision to push forward to next October its timetable for accepting bids from local governments interested in hosting one of the three resort-scale casinos that will be permitted initially under a liberalization of the country’s gaming laws.
The postponement pushes Wakayama’s timetable for selecting an operating partner to the spring of 2021 and the opening of a resort to the spring of 2026.
Plans had called for an opening in time for the 2025 World Expo in nearby Osaka, about 40 miles to the north.
Although casinos are prohibited in Japan, the country is home to a large and diverse gambling industry comprising machine games, pari-mutuel betting and lotteries, and this, combined with the country’s long history as a global tourist destination, leads analysts to believe it could be one of the largest emerging markets in the world.
Nearly every major gaming operator in the world expressed interest at one time or another, but enthusiasm has dimmed since the pandemic hit, canceling the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which was to have been the springboard for the market’s debut, and momentum has slowed on the political side of the process.
The prefecture and its capital city of Wakayama, which are competing for a license with much larger jurisdictions such as Yokohama and Osaka, have attracted only two bidders to date. They are Macau junket giant Suncity and Clairvest Neem Ventures, a subsidiary of Canadian private equity firm Clairvest Group.
