Japan’s Wakayama confirms IR bidders: Suncity vs. Clairvest

Content Team January 18, 2021

The Wakayama prefecture is envisioning a Las Vegas style casino resort on a privately owned 58.3 acre land in the Marina City

On Friday (January 15), Japan’s Wakayama prefecture confirmed that there are no new firms that have submitted a request for proposal (RFP).

The Wakayama RFP revised deadline was also due on Friday, and the organisations that have expressed their desires for the Wakayama IR casino licence are; Hong Kong’s Suncity Group and Canadian IR investment firm Clairvest Group. The two organisations were able to make submissions on the same day, according to a report by GGRAsia.

The Privately-held Macau junket investor Suncity Group, on September last year, opened a 354 square metres office in Wakayama Japan, that will be used as a promotional base in its attempts to land one of Japan’s first integrated resorts, with its Wakayama IR2.0 concept.

Suncity assumes it will spend between US$3.8bn to US$4.5bn on the Integrated Resort which will be located in Wakayama on Honshū island’s Kii Peninsula. Wakayama prefecture officials are reportedly envisioning a Las Vegas – style casino resort integrating multiple hotels, exhibition facilities and retail elements as well as a ‘sports and wellness’ theme on a 58.3-acre privately-owned land in the Marina City that is approximately 40 kilometers from Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay.

Due to the global pandemic, the Wakayama prefecture’s RFP submission deadline for the private-sector, which was originally scheduled for October 19, 2020, had been extended to January 15, 2021.

Furthermore, Wakayama’s governor, Yoshinobu Nisaka (pictured), had previously stated that the Wakayama prefecture’s close proximity to Osaka will not effect them. The governor’s statement has also been backed by the Japanese central government. Japan has pushed back the timetable under which Japan’s national authorities will start accepting proposals for integrated resorts (IRs) – as casino complexities are known in Japan – from October 2021. A total of three casino resorts will be permitted nationally in a first phase of liberalisation.

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