Japan Casino Bidding Round Imminent, Could NY Losers Mull Play in Land of the Rising Sun?
Posted on: June 26, 2025, 08:03h.
Last updated on: June 26, 2025, 09:52h.
- Japan could soon initiate another bidding round for casino licenses
- Japan authorized up to three casino resorts in 2018
- Only one casino is in development by way of Osaka
A senior official in Japan’s central government says a second round of casino bidding for the possible issuance of two additional gaming licenses is forthcoming.
First reported by Hokkaido Shimbun, Naoya Haraikawa, the commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency who previously led the Office of Integrated Resort Regime Promotion, which aided the National Diet in crafting the country’s 2018 gaming law, said this week that another bidding round “should not be far off.”
Haraikawa said the goal of the Diet’s 2018 casino legislation, an Act on Development of Specified Integrated Resort Districts, known as the IR Implementation Act, was to grow leisure travel to Japan and diversify its economy away from being primarily known as a global hub for business.
Haraikawa said during his speech in Hokkaido that while the “revenue engine of IRs is the casino,” the government seeks “to develop new tourist hubs equipped with other attractive tourism facilities in one place.”
Japan Casino Push Underwhelms
Haraikawa was instrumental in satisfying then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s wish to bring destination casino resorts to Japan. To appease public concerns about gambling addiction, the 2018 bill came with consumer protections, including ¥3,000 (US$21) casino entry fees for Japanese people. The admission charge is designed to limit problem gambling domestically and force the casinos to primarily focus on visiting foreigners.
When Japan passed its casino legislation, the country had the interest of nearly every global gaming power player.
The likes of Las Vegas Sands, MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, Wynn Resorts, Hard Rock International, Melco Resorts, Genting, Galaxy Entertainment, and Mohegan all expressed interest. But as Japan’s deliberate rulemaking process and subsequent application procedure discussions took years to complete, most lost interest.
Sands was the first to exit, which resulted in most others following. Japan ended up fielding only two bids — MGM in Osaka and Casinos Australia for Nagasaki. Japan greenlit MGM’s bid and dismissed the Nagasaki scheme.
MGM, in a partnership with Japanese financial conglomerate Orix Corporation, is amid construction of a $9 billion IR on Osaka’s Yumeshima Island that’s to open in 2030.
NYC Winners Could Consider Japan
After Japan fumbled its casino opportunity, the three downstate New York casino licenses that became awardable in 2023 gained the attention of the global gaming industry. The state will decide which three of the eight bids win the coveted concessions by the end of the year.
Sands and Wynn have already pulled out due to local opposition and/or concerns about New York liberalizing iGaming. Remaining contenders for the NYC licenses include MGM, Genting, Caesars, Hard Rock, Mohegan, and Bally’s.
The losers could return their interest to Japan should their investment capital not be tied up in New York. Tokyo and Hokkaido are reportedly interested in considering IR developments should another casino application period initiate.
Gaming analysts with investment bank Morgan Stanley said in a note this week that Singapore’s casino duopoly held by Sands and Genting will remain “competitive and large” regardless of when casinos become operational in Japan and Thailand, the latter being another Asian nation bullish on gaming resort developments.
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