The number of pachinko halls in Japan declined by 584 halls to 8,302 in 2020, according to the Zennihon Yugi Jigyo Kyodo – Japan’s cooperative of pachinko halls.
Based on numbers gathered from its latest member survey, which includes statistics up to 15 January 2021, the number of halls at the end of December was 8,302 – down by 19 from the previous month with including new halls, 37 closed halls and 148 temporarily closed halls.
The decline was far more significant for the full year however, with 584 fewer halls than the 8,886 reported at the end of 2019.There were a total of 90 new stores that joined the cooperative in January 2020, while the number of closed stores was 612 – representing a 6% decrease in member halls.
As of the end of December 2020, the total number of gaming machines operating in halls was 3,707,894. This broke down to 2,244,798 pachinko machines (up 585 units from the previous month), 1,462,969 pachislot machines (down 667 units) and 37 others (no change).
Compared with the end of December 2019, the total number of operating machines decreased by 192,799 with pachinko down by 125,788 machines and pachislot by 67,011.