Top casino firms eye prospects
Japanese lawmakers playing roulette during a casino trial run hosted by the Japan Casino Dealers Association and Casino School in Tokyo. AFP |
Japan would be a latecomer to a gambling boom across the region, which is looking to Las Vegas-style super casinos to entice more tourists, with two huge complexes springing up in Singapore.
"Nowadays casinos are not considered to be evil places, whereas they might have been considered so 20 years ago," said Aaron Fischer, an analyst who follows gaming at the investment bank CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.
"Across Asia over the last few years you've been seeing legalization of casinos including in Singapore," he noted, predicting that Japan would follow suit within the next few years.
Lawmakers from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are already drawing up proposals to allow a handful of huge Vegas-style casinos, which could open their doors within a few years.
Almost half of the lower house of parliament including some opposition lawmakers supports the general idea of legalizing casinos, said Toru Mihara, advisor to the LDP casino study group.
"If we can create legal structures within one or two years to come, maybe in 2012 casinos in Japan will start to operate," he said.
The major US casino operators are already regular visitors to Japan, networking and lobbying behind the scenes to try to secure a lucrative contract in the world's second-largest economy, Mihara said.
"They are totally keen on this potential big market," he added.
But local entertainment companies are also expected to be involved as the government will be reluctant to hand over to foreign operators alone what some experts claim amounts to almost a license to print money.
So US giants such as Las Vegas Sands and Harrah's Entertainment could team up with Japanese companies such as Sega Sammy, Konami or Aruze to build huge entertainment complexes including casinos, analysts said.
Although illegal backroom casinos exist in Japan, the only gambling officially open to the country's population of 128 million is on horse, speedboat and bicycle racing and lotteries.
But anyone in doubt of Japan's love of a flutter need look no further than the nation's multi-billion dollar pachinko industry, which attracts some 17 million punters, from salarymen to pensioners and even young women.
Pachinko, a Japanese version of pinball played in thousands of noisy parlours across the country, is not officially defined as gambling, because prizes have to be exchanged outside the premises for cash.
"There are approximately 5.5 million pachinko and pachislot machines here in Japan. If you count this as similar to slot machines, we're the biggest casino country in the world," said Mihara.
AFP
(China Daily 04/17/2007 page16)
