Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN JAN 2022 32 luxurious resort offerings to be found in Macau or Las Vegas. Supporting IRs has therefore been politically unpopular, as we have seen in Yokohama. There have been several scandals associated with the development of IRs in Japan. The most well-known was the infamous 500.com scandal which saw an online sports lottery service provider in mainland China bribe Japanese House of Representatives member Tsukasa Akimoto, who was serving as State Minister of the Cabinet Office at the time. Akimoto was jailed for four years in September 2021 for receiving bribes and offering to bribe witnesses in his own case. Two changes of Prime Minister since Shinzo Abe started championing the policy of legalizing Japanese IRs haven’t helped. While Prime Minister Abe’s replacement Yoshihide Suga, and his replacement Fumio Kishida, are both from the same ruling Liberal Democratic Party as Abe, each change of leadership takes us a further step away from the original IR champion, making it easier to bail on the policy for political expediency reasons. Almost every economic factor in the Japan IR model has gone against the operators. Just a few examples are the relatively high 30% gaming tax, the imposition of a Singapore- style entrance fee for locals, a gaming floor maximum limit of 3% by area, effectively short license periods and the imposition of surrounding public infrastructure costs COVER STORY