Inside Asian Gaming

October 2014 inside asian gaming 43 session, which ended in June. Assuming it passes in the current session, lawmakers then will move to tackle the host of thorny issues covering the bidding process, licensing, regulation, taxation and local government involvement. Mr Hagiuda said this could happen via legislation presented in the next regular session, which begins in January. Analysts expect an initial three- to four-casino market would generate gaming revenues of upwards of US$15 billion a year, and an A-list of global operators say they’ll bid for licenses in Tokyo, Osaka and elsewhere. Mr Hagiuda said major cities should have priority before more remote locations are considered and told Bloomberg that Tokyo, Osaka and Yokohama are the strongest candidates. Officials in Osaka have been the most outspoken in their support and are already in negotiations with a number of major operators. However, this is not the case in Tokyo, the capital, the country’s largest and most affluent city, and its premier tourist destination, the metropolitan area seen as crucial to realizing the vision Mr Abe and the LDP hold for resort casinos as an economic development tool. Tokyo Gov. Yoichi Masuzoe, who took office in February, is cool to the idea and has said pursuing a casino is “not at the top” of his agenda. Local officials, meanwhile, say preparations for the Olympics have put the casino on the back burner, and it’s reported that Mr Masuzoe has downgraded the team tasked with preparing for one. The run-up to the Olympics also is driving up construction costs, which have risen so steeply the government is considering scaling back its plans for the Olympics, officials have told Reuters . These costs are likely to emerge as a major concern for gaming operators, says Satoshi Okabe, a senior manager at Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising agency, which counts the city of Tokyo as a client. “The reality is that preparations for the Olympics are going to be pretty challenging. Casinos are secondary,” he told Reuters . “Building costs are going to spike and foreign casino operators are going to find investment returns inefficient.” HKJC Sees Macau Link in Massive Betting Black Market The Hong Kong Jockey Club says the volume of illegal online football bets in the city hit HK$500 billion last year (US$64 billion), but regulators have no plans to intervene to block the unlicensed Web sites taking the bets. A spokesman for the Home Affairs Bureau, which is responsible for the territory’s gaming laws, said sufficient legislation is in place to police the industry and it would not follow the stringent measures currently under consideration in Singapore, where a bill was introduced last month requiring ISPs to block access to black market operators as part of a package of fines and stiff jail terms for offenders. “Respecting freedom to access information, we do not block one’s Internet access,” the spokesman told the South China Morning Post . “We have adopted a multi-pronged strategy which includes regulation, law enforcement, public education and provision of counselling and treatment services.” Losses by Hong Kong bettors are estimated to total HK$12 billion a year, and only a portion of it is channeled through the Jockey Club, the territory’s only legal online gambling network. The rest is characterized by Martin Pubrick, the club’s director of integrity and security, as a key contributor to the “international expansion and legitimization of organized crime,” and he blames the “massive wealth accumulated from suspicious funds channeled from China through Macau casinos by junket operators”. Match-fixing is another serious concern. Experts term it a global epidemic, in football especially, though not exclusively, and Singapore’s crackdown is aimed in part at tackling an illicit cross- national trade with “significant ties to Hong Kong and Macau,” according to the Post . Hong Kong police made 192 arrests related to illegal bookmaking in the first half of 2014, a lot of it tied to World Cup action, prompting the Hong Kong Football Association to hire fraud monitor Sportradar to track games. REGIONAL BRIEFS Tokyo Governor Yoichi Masuzoe Martin Pubrick