Inside Asian Gaming

IAG FEB 2021年2月 亞博匯 62 JAPAN Galaxy is arguably best positioned of the three, the most obvious reason for that being the enormous treasure chest of cash sitting on its balance sheet – more than US$6 billion. While the other five Macau concessionaires having been readily raising debt to shore up their cash reserves during the global pandemic, Galaxy has the financial capacity to ride just about anything out. The conservative Japanese government will surely find this kind of financial strength very attractive. Galaxy has the largest team on the ground in Japan of any non-Japanese company, with some 25 or so employees manning the Galaxy Entertainment Japan office in Tokyo. Galaxy often points to their Okura branded hotel at Galaxy Macau to push their Japanese chops, and to their 5% ownership of Monaco’s 158-year-old SBM (owner-operator of the world-famous Monte Carlo casino) to dilute their Chinese roots and endow a European flavor to their bid. On the downside, Galaxy has been active in Japan for quite some time but is yet to announce a consortium partner and yet to focus on any one particular location in Japan. It’s also questionable whether any of the four current locations would be of interest to Galaxy – Nagasaki and Wakayama are too small, Galaxy has already withdrawn from Osaka leaving that location to MGM, and Yokohama is known to be problematic in a number of ways referred to in Part 1 of this article, not least of which its upcoming mayoral election and the anti-IR stance of the majority of the Yokohama people and some mayoral candidates. If Galaxy is to chase a license, it’s likely to be in one of the higher-population locations of Tokyo (likely at Odaiba or perhaps the former Tsukiji fish market) or Aichi (next to Chubu Centrair airport servicing Nagoya), neither of which have officially declared and both of which are rapidly running out of time. And ultimately the question remains, will Japan accept such a powerful company from China? Galaxy Galaxy Entertainment Group is sitting pretty with a US$6 billion war chest at its disposal. 銀河娛樂集團坐擁60億美元的巨額資金。