Officials in Nagasaki Prefecture have reportedly announced that whoever is selected as the jurisdiction’s preferred operating partner for its envisioned integrated casino resort will be required to hand over more than $1.5 million to cover a multitude of costs.

According to a report from Inside Asian Gaming, the Kyushu community is home to approximately 1.3 million people and is hoping to win the right to host one of Japan’s coming trio of Las Vegas-style developments. The source also detailed that Nagasaki Prefecture wants its envisioned $10 billion facility to sit on a 74-acre plot of land located next to the Huis Ten Bosch theme park so as to help boost its economy through increased levels of tourism.

Quintuple candidates:

But the southern jurisdiction is reportedly being required to nominate a foreign firm to run its planned gambling-friendly development in advance of submitting a completed license application to a panel of federal selectors by an April of 2022 deadline. Nagasaki Prefecture purportedly finished the request for proposal (RFP) stage of this process in January and is now sifting through bids from five potential operating partners encompassing The Niki and Chyau Fwu (Parkview) Group, American casino operator Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment, European gambling giants Casinos Austria International and Groupe Partouche and a consortium being fronted by Hong Kong-listed Get Nice Holdings Limited.

Extra assessment:

Takeshi Komiya from the Japanese jurisdiction’s local integrated casino resort organizing body has now reportedly divulged that the ultimate winner of this race is to be obliged to fork out about $1.5 million in order to satisfy some of the costs of this selection process alongside approximately $92,000 for associated background checks. The civil servant’s revelation purportedly came some two months after Nagasaki Prefecture explained that its preferred operating partner will furthermore be required to contribute around $141 million to help improve traffic infrastructure near the proposed development.

April ambition:

Nagasaki Prefecture is reportedly eager to have whittled its five-strong list of runners for the preferred partner status down to three by the end of this month with Komiya moreover having disclosed that this trio ‘will each pay $92,000 for background checks’.

Fresh foe:

However, Inside Asian Gaming used a second story to report that Nagasaki Prefecture is now facing stiff opposition to its integrated casino resort plan in the form of the new Stop Casino! citizens group. This organization purportedly used a Friday press conference to demand that work on bringing the planned facility to an area near the small city of Sasebo be immediately halted due to future uncertainty connected with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Approaching apprehension:

The group reportedly claimed that such an integrated casino resort could become a source of future infections owing to the fact that patrons will be in close proximity to each other. It also purportedly expressed dissatisfaction that the jurisdiction’s associated implementation policy did not mention what steps the nominated operator would be obliged to take so as to minimize the spread of infectious diseases and social harms.

Reportedly read a statement from Stop Casino!…

“We resent that the prefecture has proceeded steadily despite the serious situation of the prefecture’s residents during the coronavirus pandemic.”