Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN MAY 2019 72 Wakayama City 和歌山市 JAPAN 25 years ago. Once you decide on the IR [license], you can start construction right away. With other candidate sites, operators need to start developing infrastructure or have to fill the land or start from scratch, but in Wakayama, it’s immediately ready for development. Fourth, Wakayama Marina City has one of the best yacht harbors in western Japan. It has a national training center for marine sports. Olympic athletes train there and it is also a permanent host venue for high school marine sport competitions. The Wakayama IR will be leisure- focused, developed in conjunction with marine sports. In addition, Wakayama Prefecture has been engaged in IR development for many years. Its administration and politics have been very stable, so there is no obstacle in this field. MC: Can an IR in Wakayama co-exist with an IR in Osaka? YN: Every time I meet an international IR operator for the first time, I ask one question: If there is an IR in Osaka, are you still interested in a Wakayama IR? And the answer is always the same: We are happy to have an Osaka IR. They say that if there is more than one IR nearby, that will create a synergy effect and bring more benefits to the area. If you look at Europe, there are many casinos in close proximity. There’s a good example in Singapore, which is our model for an IR in Wakayama. There are two huge- scale IRs in Singapore. Also, the Wakayama IR and Osaka IR will have different concepts. While Wakayama is leisure focused, the one in Osaka will be a more urban type. This difference is very similar to the example in Singapore, where they have different concepts with Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa. Amid information given by [Japan’s] authorities, there is no statement that two IRs in very close proximity is a problem. The Diet and top government officials as well as leading experts have said it is not a problem. There is no negative information issued by the authorities about two neighboring IRs.