Last week’s briefing at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch 2017 Japan Conference also indicated that the opening date for an initial casino resort might be pushed out to the year 2025.
"We commit to being a good partner to Japanese companies in a Japanese-led IR [integrated resort] consortium,” stated Murren’s briefing, adding that local-government selection of business-operator partners was likely to be in 2018, with casino concession awards and
Murren’s update twice used the phrase " Japanese-led consortium”. But the MGM Resorts presentation did not reveal whether the group might – under still to be clarified local rules – be required to take a minority rather than a majority stake.
During last week’s presentation Murren said that MGM Resorts had a "proven track record of being a trusted, dependable partner” in ventures with local partners, citing as one example the group’s Macau casino venture with Chinese businesswoman Pansy Ho Chiu King: initially a 50:50 arrangement and now 56-percent owned by MGM Resorts.
The briefing document also included previously-displayed artist renderings of resort concepts for, respectively, Tokyo,
Japanese financial holding company Nomura said in a report issued in early August that a Japanese casino industry with "two major integrated resorts” could eventually generate gross gaming revenue of US$7 billion per year.
Source: GMB / GGR Asia