(ATR) Tokyo will most likely not have casinos in time for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Lawmakers reintroduced a bill to legalize casino-style gambling during Japan's recent Diet session.
According to The Japan Times,Osaka and Yokohama are the front runners to host the first integrated resorts (IRs) with casinos.
Osaka Governor Ichiro Matsui has said that despite concerns surrounding the bill put forth to the Diet, he hopes to open a gambling resort complex on the island of Yumeshima by 2020.
"The Tokyo Olympics will bring lots of people around the world to Japan, and, along with an integrated resort (IR), all of Osaka wants to have something for them," Matsui told reporters on Monday.
But Takashi Kiso, CEO of the Tokyo-based International Casino Institute, says it would be almost impossible for local governments who win casino licenses to open any planned integrated resorts in just five years.
"The only way an IR will open [by 2020] is if the government allows it to partially open before the Olympic Games," Kiso toldThe Japan Times.
Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved the Lower House in November 2014.At that time, several bills were still in discussion including a bill that would have permitted casino-style gambling at designated integrated resorts.
Over 20 municipalities have expressed interest in such resorts, which would also incorporate hotels, theme parks, convention facilities, shopping malls, and entertainment venues.
Written byNicole Bennett
Home page photo: Getty Images
For general comments or questions,click here.
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics isAroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.
Últimas Noticias
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
