Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAN 2020年1月 亞博匯 25 封面故事 W atching the to and fro over the question of Japanese IRs for the past two decades has been simply fascinating. We saw plenty of false starts through the 2000s and early 2010s. Depending on how you look at it, the Japanese are either masters of planning, studying and debating minutia for years, or they are masters of procrastination and delay, always finding an upcoming election or some other justification to kick the can down the road “just one more time.” But Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party has resolutely stuck to the task year in and year out, finally seeing the passage of the Integrated Resort Promotion Act in December 2016, followed by the Integrated Resorts Implementation Act in July 2018. The slow grinding machine of Japanese politics and bureaucracy is inexorably crawling its way to the finish line. The truly big decisions – where the IRs will be, and who will run them – can no longer be delayed or ignored. The national government has determined that the Japanese regulator, currently in the form of the Casino Administration Committee, will at long last come into existence on 7 January this year. And in November the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism proposed 4 January to 30 July 2021 as the period for local governments, hand in hand with their then- partnered up private sector IR operators, to submit their IR applications to the national government. The result of those applications will determine the three locations, and the three operators, of Japan’s first round of integrated resorts. Should those resorts be deemed a success, there is provision for a second round of IR licenses to be issued, many years in the future. That leaves 2020 as the calendar year in which this long dating game between candidate operators and potential Japanese locales will finally come to a head. The 看 著在過去20年間關於日本IR問題的那些反反 覆覆，簡直是令人著迷。我們在2000和2010 年代看過很多假起步。視乎你的觀點，日本人 可以是規劃大師，並且花上多年來研究及討 論細節；但亦可以算是拖延及誤點大師，經常 以將要來臨的大選或者其他理由，「就再這麼一次」把決定推遲。 但日本首相安倍晉三的自民黨一直堅持持續地專注在這項 工作之上，最後終於看到《綜合度假村推廣法》於2016年12月通 過，而《綜合度假村實施法》亦在2018年7月出現。猶如一部轉速緩 慢的機器的日本的政治及官僚系統，正以一個無人可擋的姿態逐 漸爬向終點。 真正的重大決定—即IR將會出現的地方以及其營運者—再也 不能夠被推遲或忽視。中央政府已經決定，日本的監察機構，就是 現時的「賭場管理委員會」，終於在今年1月7日正式成立。而在11 月，國土交通省就提議了把2021年1月4日至7月30日劃為讓地方 政府與他們在當時的那些私人IR營運商攜手，向中央政府提交他 們的IR申請的時期。這些申請的結果將會決定到底是那三個地點 以及那三個營運商會成就日本第一輪的綜合度假村。如果那些度 假村被認定為成功的話，將有可能在多年之後出現第二輪IR牌照 的發放。 這些都令到2020年成為候選營運商與日本潛在IR落腳地之 間的這場長期追求和約會遊戲的緊張關頭。在這場遊戲中，男生 由候選營運商扮演。他們有些會試著與房間中的每位女生跳舞， 而有些則會把注意力集中在某一位女生身上，除非及直至她拒絕 了他，或者在一些情況下她拒絕了所有男生。在這場遊戲中，女生 就是那些可能的落腳地，有些是城市，有些則是縣府，每位都被一 大群男生追求。這些男生的態度，隨著女生的吸引度，以及她所揭 曉的要求及條件而改變。