Casino bill stalled for now
At news conferences and other events in and around Tokyo, the Las Vegas Sands Corp. is rolling out celebrities including soccer legend David Beckham and Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh to impress the Japanese government, which is expected to award at least two integrated resort licenses in the coming year. This despite Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson’s recent quibble that possible restrictions on casino floor size and other limits on Japanese casinos might make him less inclined to invest billions in the emerging market.
According to the Associated Press, at a press conference in Tokyo, Sands President and COO Robert Goldstein introduced Beckham, Walsh and celebrity manager Irving Azoff, all of whom expressed their appreciation of Japanese culture. The long-haired Beckham, acting as ambassador for the Sands, attended charity events around the capital. And Walsh noted that, though he has enjoyed playing at major Japanese concert halls such as Tokyo’s Budokan, he feels such facilities are sub-par by today’s standards.
“The logistics to make a good performance in Japan are just too much. It’s just too hard,” Walsh said. “As an artist that’s the way we feel. We feel sad because it’s too hard to come here.” The implicit message is that the Sands Corp. will do better, creating a world-class resort with state-of-the-art meeting, conference and entertainment venues.
Tim Leiweke, CEO of Oak View Group and former president and CEO of AEG, said he wants to build an arena in Japan that would compare favorably with Madison Square Gardens and attract major sporting events.
“The NBA needs that kind of facilities to make that kind of trip worth it,” he said.
Meanwhile, Melco Resorts Chairman and CEO Lawrence Ho is equally committed to Japan, and has called it “the most exciting market” for global gaming operators. Earlier this year, Ho vowed “to spend what it takes” to win an IR license in Japan. He told Forbes his company’s philosophy “is always to deliver the coolest, the most innovative, the highest-quality resorts. I think that blends very well with the philosophy that the Japanese market has.
“Everywhere we build integrated resorts, our mantra is always to build the coolest thing,” Ho said. “And Japan will easily be the coolest. We’ll experiment with the latest in technology, latest in building methods, latest in engineering. But in order to do that, we really have to pick a location that is top tier—near major cities with a huge population and also high potential for tourists.”
The cities most often named as possible casino sites are Osaka, Yokohama and Tokyo. Ho has been outspoken in his opposition to Tokyo as a casino site. “It’s such a fantastic city, but it’s a city for government, for financial. I think the government is thinking of using the integrated resorts as urban revitalization, so I think they’re looking at Yokohama.”
Part II of the casino legislation was to have been approved and passed this year, but that agenda has been tabled until the spring of 2018 at the earliest.
Last month, just as the extraordinary Diet session was to have begun, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved the body, triggering a general election in late October and pushing the casino issue off the table for now. Meanwhile, it’s clear Adelson’s charm offensive is back on, in a big way. As Forbes contributor Muhammed Cohen wrote, critics who were “hyperventilating” about potentially onerous regulations jumped the gun.
“It’s like a kid complaining about curfew before parents say the time they need to be home,” Cohen wrote. “There was never any reason to doubt there would be a curfew; until we know the number, how can anyone have an issue?”
