Officials in Nagasaki Prefecture have reportedly announced that a total of ‘five groups’ have submitted applications in hopes of being selected to operate the Japanese jurisdiction’s envisioned integrated casino resort.

According to a report from GGRAsia, the community of approximately 1.3 million people wants to win one of Japan’s coming trio of integrated casino resort licenses so as to be able to bring a Las Vegas-style development to a 74-acre plot of land located next to its Huis Ten Bosch theme park. The source detailed that the locality is keen to open such a venue by the end of the decade in order to help boost its economy through increased levels of tourism.

Protracted process:

Although most gambling is currently illegal in Japan, the coalition government of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe passed legislation in July of 2018 that is to see the nation of over 126 million inhabitants license three integrated casino resorts featuring hotels, exhibition facilities and extensive gaming floors. In order to be in the running to host one of these potentially-lucrative developments, candidate communities are first purportedly being obliged to pick a prospective operator before submitting a final bid to a panel of federal selectors in advance of an April of 2022 deadline.

Committed contenders:

Nagasaki Prefecture completed the three-week request for proposal (RFP) stage of this process yesterday and is now reportedly set to consider submissions from five entities hoping to be selected as the preferred operator for any such gambling-friendly scheme. Although the southern Kyushu community has not specifically identified these runners, American casino firm Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment earlier announced that it was taking part in association with local entity Oshidori International Development Godogaisha while other candidates are purportedly thought to encompass European gambling giants Casinos Austria International and Groupe Partouche.

Selection schedule:

With the RFP phase of its plan complete, Nagasaki Prefecture now reportedly intends to narrow the group of prospective operators down to three before subjecting the remaining firms to a series of intense ‘probity tests’ in May. From there and the community purportedly wants to have selected an outright winner by the ‘springtime’ of next year only after having the leftover runners present their specific integrated casino resort visions to a local government panel.