Japan’s Big Bet on Casinos

For more than a decade, most of the action in the gaming industry has been centered on Macau. Fueled by Chinese high rollers’ seemingly insatiable desire to gamble, the former Portuguese colony—the only place gambling is legal in China—mushroomed into the world’s biggest gaming market before a Chinese government crackdown on corruption pulled many VIP gamblers away from its tables.

Now the industry thinks it’s found the Next Big Thing to help take up the slack: Japanese casinos. After years of delays, the Japanese parliament on Dec. 15 approved a bill to legalize casino gambling in the world’s third-largest economy. Rather than standalone gambling halls, the casinos are expected to be part of integrated resorts, much like Singapore’s two complexes operated by Las Vegas Sands and Malaysian gaming giant Genting. Those properties have transformed Singapore into the world’s third-largest gambling center, after Macau and Las Vegas. But Grant Govertsen, a Macau-based gaming analyst at Union Gaming Group, says Japan would be unlike any other casino market in Asia; because of its large population and high per capita income, it won’t have to rely on gamblers from China and other countries to fill its tables.