Image by Boudewijn Huysmans

Nagasaki Forced To Postpone The IR Timeline Ruining The Original Schedule

Article by : Helen Dec 9, 2020

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If everything went according to the initial schedule, Japan’s integrated resort market would have been in the last stages of development. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a true challenge for the new industry to enter the Japanese market, as there were many roadblocks on its way. These include not only the still-ongoing coronavirus pandemic but also some other unpredicted obstacles such as corruption among politicians. Thus, the country was forced to move the IR opening schedule while its leaders hope to see the first 3 integrated resorts launched within the next couple of years.

Nagasaki is one of the country’s prefectures hoping to be selected in the first round. It shows excellent results and always increases its chances to be the one to host a massive integrated resort. One of Nagasaki’s latest major steps was announcing the launch of the request-for-proposal (RFP) process that will give a decent start for the prefecture’s plans. The local government claims that the prefecture will invite some of the major casino operators to submit the RFPs to help with the IR project starting from January 2022. Once all the RFPs are submitted and properly reviewed, the Nagasaki prefecture will be able to decide which casino operator to partner with.

As soon as a suitable collaborator will be found and a smart project plan will be developed, the prefecture will introduce its integrated resort offer to the national government, which in turn, will decide whether to give it the green light or not. Nagasaki expects that to happen sometime during spring 2022.

The initial plan was to launch as many integrated resorts as possible by the 2025 World Expo in Osaka. However, because of the Central Government’s decision to postpone the application period for IR licenses to October 2021, fulfilling the original plan seems to be impossible. The Nagasaki prefecture believes that it will be able to launch its project by 2030 if it is selected to host an integrated resort. Just like the Central Government, Nagasaki’s local government was forced to postpone the RFP process a couple of times due to the coronavirus pandemic that always creates new challenges and obstacles for the IR development process.

Nagasaki Prefecture will follow the guidance of these important policies as we proceed towards our IR development plan submission, and we will continue to also consider the perspective of IR operators as we move forward with our operator RFP and selection procedure.

Nagasaki is not the only region that has put the original IR opening plan off the table. The Wakayama prefecture was also forced to move the end date for submitting the proposal documents to January 2021. According to the local officials, the casino operators may need more time to submit their proposals since many businesses are shut-down in the prefecture. Yokohama seems to be the prefecture that outstrips the worst predictions. The local signature-gathering group “Yokohama Citizens’ Group to Decide on a Casino” has already collected a number of signatures required for the start of the referendum, where the local residents will decide whether to stop the IR development in the region or not.

There are also some positive tendencies in IR development. Although in September this year, the Central Government warned that the IR Basic Policy introduction could be also postponed to the end of 2021, it has already established a basic policy draft containing the main provisions on how the integrated resorts should operate.