Reports JAPAN - INTEGRATED RESORTS
THE INTERGRATED RESORT PLANS It was Shinzo Abe who began to develop the
idea of building casinos in Japan. Japan was always considered one of the largest and last major untapped markets for casinos. With no casinos to date, gambling in general is prohibited and under the Penal Code of Japan a person found running a for-profit gambling establishment is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.
Te only exceptions are the four public sports – horse racing, bicycle racing, powerboat racing and motorcycle racing - run by local governments or government corporations; the public lottery and the Japanese Football Pools. Pachinko and Pachislot exist under a grey umbrella and have managed to hide its technically illegal gambling oddity in plain sight for the last 80 years. Online gambling is still considered illegal.
Japan’s casino liberalisation plan has been likened to a fourth ‘arrow’ supplementing Abe’s ‘three arrow’ Abenomics policy made up of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms. And so legislation was introduced.
By the end of 2016 Japanese legislators had passed a law aimed at lifting the ban on opening casinos. Te IR Promotion Bill, officially known as the Integrated Resort Development Promotion Bill, was sponsored by a group of lawmakers mostly from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Te ethos behind the bill was to attract more foreign tourists into the country, boost employment, help cash strapped jurisdictions and therefore revitalise the economy.
Te Promotion Bill outlined the necessary legislative measures needed to invoke the act and was the first procedure required to introduce casinos into Japan. It took a two stage legislative process – firstly the passing of the act to ‘facilitate’ the development of IRs and secondly the passing of an act to ‘implement’ IRs.
In July 2018 the IR Implementation Bill was enacted and this provided a follow up to the promotion law of 2016 and created a framework for the operation of casinos resorts. Tis brought an end to almost 20 years of political debates and paved the way for a $16bn Integrated Resort market.
Te plan was to introduce the first casino licences in 2020 with the first resorts ready to open around 2025.
Due to continuous opposition to the bill in both lower and upper houses of parliament, tight regulation was promised to get the bill passed. With fears centred around gambling addiction problems, deterioration of public order and money laundering issues, Japan also introduced
P144 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
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