Te Osaka mayor says the city would hope to earmark a 70 hectare portion of the island to have a casino built on the island before the 2025 Expo which will utilise a separate 60 hectare site, but there is concern among expo supporters that the Expo officials would hesitate to award an Expo if it’s next to an Integrated Casino Resort.
casinos across 75 markets worldwide.
Melco Resorts and Entertainment Ltd meanwhile has promised to move its headquarters to Japan if it wins a casino licence and has appeared before the Diet to present its interest in opening a resort in Japan. Melco also debuted its biometric security system earlier this year for identification purposes.
Meanwhile Crown Resorts Ltd say they may have already overcapitalised and may not bid for a Japanese resort. With costs of up to $1.86bn to complete the Crown Sydney project Crown they may simply leave the bidding to other companies.
PACHINKO AND PACHISLOT At the moment Japan’s main gambling diet
consists of the unique Pachinko and Pachislot market which dominates the industry.
Described as a noisy vertical variant of pinball, pachinko saw ¥21.6trn waged last year – about 30 per cent of Japan’s ¥70.9trn leisure market. It is a huge part of the Japanese economy and despite the fact they are garish, cheaply built and hypnotic they are an integral part of the Japanese culture and cityscape.
Men make up a large percentage of players and the industry is merely ‘tolerated’ by the government which is mostly run by Koreans who have opened pachinko parlours throughout the cities. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the parlours are owned by ethnic Koreans and many claim that pachinko profits are funnelled back to the North Korean government.
that the Expo officials would hesitate to award an Expo if it’s next to an Integrated Casino Resort.
Meanwhile MGM Resorts is one of the favourites for the Japanese casino bid and has upped the ante with its own Japanese website promoting its business and official partner tag for the Osaka World Expo 2025 bid.
Tey have a Japanese MGM Resorts office running from Tokyo and also in Osaka. Last year MGM reinforced its commitment to the market after appointing the former Charge d’Affaires for the US Embassy in Tokyom Jason Hyland, as Representative Officer and President of MGM Resorts Japan.
Hard Rock International is also looking to expand into Japan. Known primarily for its restaurants Hard Rock also operates hotels and
As gambling for cash in Japan is illegal pachinko is treated as an amusement activity overseen mostly by retired police. Winning balls are swapped for tokens which they can then exchange for a prize or basically ‘cash in’ via an outlet outside the packinko parlour where they can swap their tokens for cash.
Te pachinko sector has had its wave of bad publicity mainly down to gambling addiction stories relating to these games but they continue to thrive.
Pachinko machines were imported into Japan in the 1920s whilst the pachislot machines arrived from the US after the Second World War. At its peak the market exceeded ¥30trn and has produced a mass entertainment culture cherished by many Japanese.
Pachislot is a derivation of the traditional pachinko machines and similar in appearance to slots displaying electronic reels. Again they are token play and payout redeemable for prizes which again are swapped outside for cash.
Until the 1980s the pachislot machines operated in the pachinko parlours were mechanical devices but have since evolved into electronic machines and since the 1990s machines take a pre-paid card instead of cash to lessen the ability for fiddling whilst they have animated screens instead of physical drums. Players can earn as much as ¥200,000 in a single day although it is said that ¥10,000 can be lost in 40 minutes without winning on a typical machine.
Although the pachinko parlours were closed during the Second World War they re-opened in the late 1940s and have remained popular since with the first commercial parlour opening in Nagoya in 1948.
Since the Diet’s passing of the new law in December 2016 to legalise casinos the question for those in the pachinko industry is how this will affect their business?
Pachinko’s popularity has already declined over the last 20 years. Back in 1995 it was estimated that 30 million customers paid out ¥30trn in revenue and played at over 18,000 pachinko halls compared to around 9.4 million players today who play at some 11,000 parlours generating revenues of ¥21.6trn last year.
Te pachinko operators’ gross profit is about 15 per cent and revenue per store is estimated to be around $3.6m annually on average. And although they introduced slot machines to attract younger customers, players under 30 years of age are a rarity.
According to data, sales of pachinko machines dropped by almost 70,000 last year to 2.9 million units whilst sales of pachislot machines increased by 34,000 machines to 1.6 million.
Of the 11,000 parlours there were 4,355 housing 101-300 units, 4,218 housing 301-500 units and 2,518 with 501-1000 units whilst there were 243 parlours with more than 1,000 machines. Some 3,500 companies are involved in the pachinko sector.
Sega-Sammy Corporation’s Nanako Shimohara said: “Te number of players is steadily declining due to the falling birth rate, which is progressing rapidly in Japan, diversification of entertainment and such, and the market size is also decreasing in turn. Added to this the changes in regulations which have been conducted repeatedly in the last few years, it has become difficult to supply products that satisfy users. Tis is also thought to contribute to the decrease in players.
“However there are still more than 10,000 parlours in Japan at which more than four million pachinko and pachislot machines operate. Te number of these installed machines
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE /MARKET DATA P115
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