Inside Asian Gaming

IAG MAY 2019年5月 亞博匯 66 JAPAN A pril’s unified local government elections closed the Heisei era, and the shape of Japan’s IR industry is vaguely starting to come into view. The Ishin political party swept the Osaka elections, which saw former Governor Ichiro Matsui and Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura swap roles, so it looks like the route to realization of an Osaka IR will be a smooth one. The opposition lost the governor election in Hokkaido, leaving the possibility of an IR on the northern Japanese island open. The most likely candidate sites for Japan’s three IRs, where both public and private sectors are working together, seem to be Osaka, Wakayama and Nagasaki, followed by Hokkaido. However, the Kanto area has the great advantage of scale. Yokohama is particularly popular in the industry with a chance to steal the spotlight while Chiba and Tokyo can’t be disregarded as possibilities. This is why the view ahead is still only vague. Let’s take a look at the schedule going forward. The government will establish the IR approval and supervisory Casino Administration Committee on 1 July. At the same time, a Fundamental Policy necessary for selection of the IR locations will be announced. Items we can expect to be covered include economic effects, tourism promotion and problem gambling countermeasures. Prefectures and municipalities hoping to attract an IR will use this policy to formulate a business plan in cooperation with their selected operator. The Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism will evaluate these and certify the IR facility. Predicting what will happen at this point is near impossible. In the original government proposal the timeline for opening was 2023, but general conjecture is that it will actually happen in 2025. FOREIGN IR CANDIDATES GATHER The roadmap leading to the 2025 World Expo in Osaka has been slightly different. An IR is expected to open there in 2024, but with operators saying construction will take three years, for that to happen, certification of the area must be complete by the second half of 2020 and construction underway by 2021. Therefore, the local government started soliciting proposals from operators in April this year. The Japanese government will form the supervisory Casino Administration Committee on 1 July 2019. 日本政府將於2019年7月1日成立負責監管的娛樂場的行政委員會