Is Japan a lost cause?
The good mail is that the “Land of the Rising Sun” will eventually legalize casino gaming and open up a new revenue stream worth as much as US$40 billion a year to the Japanese government.
It is predicted that Japan would quickly become the world’s third biggest gaming market behind only Macau and the United States.
Yet having seen countless false starts in recent years, supporters of legalizing casino gaming in Japan were dealt yet another blow this week when the ruling Liberal Democratic Party abandoned efforts to push through its latest casino bill.
As WGM wrote in March, Japan has been considered gaming’s next great frontier since before the “new Macau” emerged in the early 2000s but has since become the never ending story of disappointment instead.
With the dream of opening up the nation’s casino industry in time for the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo now seemingly over, perhaps it is time for all of us to move on?
