Macau puts money on smart city push to draw visitors
By Claire Huang
The world’s largest gambling hub plans to draw more visitors by becoming a smart city, linking up with nearby cities and rolling out attractions, from trendy eateries to video gaming competitions.
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Japan Moves Closer To Casinos, But Tantalizing Concept Not In The Cards
by Muhammad Cohen
Legislators in Japan’s lower house passed an integrated resort (IR) implementation bill on Tuesday, then extended the legislative session to July 22 to enable upper house consideration of this final step toward casino legislation. Casino companies from across the world can scarcely contain their excitement about the world’s last casino frontier beyond the forbidden zone of mainland China. But Japan won’t consider a concept for creating compelling IRs worthy of the world’s third largest economy, one aiming to double visitor arrivals to 60 million and become a global top five tourist destination.
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Chinese Influx Stirs Resentment in Once-Sleepy Cambodian Resort
by Sheridan Prasso
It’s against the law for Cambodian’s to gamble. Yet in Sihanoukville, a once-sleepy resort town where three dozen casinos have sprung up, most in the past two years, Cambodians are betting that an infusion of Chinese-built infrastructure will pay off with jobs and prosperity. So far, they’ve also won increased crime, higher housing costs and more than a little ethnic tension.
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World’s casino giants bet big on the golden Japanese market
by Eri Sugiura
Foreign casino operators are salivating over the prospect of finally winning access to the world’s third-biggest economy. They estimate that the Japanese casino market could be worth 1.75 trillion yen ($15.8 billion) a year when resorts are opened in three cities, surpassing Nevada’s $11.1 billion.
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Japan’s government ready to bet the house on casinos
by Walter Sim
Japan’s powerful Lower Chamber of Parliament has passed a controversial Bill to regulate the setting up of integrated resorts, including casinos. This paves the way for casino moguls to enter what is projected to become the world’s second-largest gaming market, after Macau.
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Phu Quoc proposed for locals’ gambling trial: report
A plan permitting Vietnamese into a casino in the southern province of Kien Giang is a step closer after the Ministry of Planning and Investment submitted paperwork to Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyễn Xuân Phúc.
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Cambodia ripe for global casino brand: GMA’s Klebanow
Cambodia has some attributes that make it potentially attractive to an international casino brand, says Andrew Klebanow, senior partner at business consultancy Global Market Advisors LLC.
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Japan IR Timeline
by Ben Blaschke
What year for Japan’s first IR? It’s a question that continues to divide industry stakeholders, the answer further clouded by the substantial disparity in opinion offered at last month’s Japan Gaming Congress (JgC) in Tokyo.
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Join Together
by James Rutherford
The story of the casino industry is a story of big companies buying other big companies, big companies buying no-so-big companies and smaller companies buying other smaller companies and becoming bigger companies. The last 20 years have seen more than a dozen operators disappear in this way, their names surviving only in the lights on the marquees, on chip faces and on the logos on table felts.
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Building a Better Macau
by Marjorie Preston
Back in 2014, Macau’s gaming industry seemed like the bet that couldn’t lose. Andrew Klebanow remembers it well.
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