Daniel Cheng on how Japan is changing the game.
It was an outcome not by design. However, few can deny the accident has been waiting to happen. 20 years after the casino market deregulation in Macau, Bill Hornbuckle will take over the seat occupied by the late Stanley Ho and join Lim Kok Thay at the enviable table of leaders in gaming monopolies. Japan will now accompany Malaysia to be casino monopoly jurisdictions in Asia.
The former’s status was cemented in December when an expert government committee denied the bid by the Nagasaki prefectural government to develop an integrated resort. The decision came after a year-and-a-half-long deliberation but the writing has been on the wall for Nagasaki since a far superior bid by Osaka Prefecture only scraped through by the skin of its teeth eight months earlier.
Read the full article in the February issue of InterGaming
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