Outlook For Casino Legislation in Brazil and Japan

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Friday, January 15th, 2016 | Written by Charles Washington

A lot of attention is paid to the state of gambling in the United States, but it’s not the only place where changes are being made to laws that prohibit or govern gambling. Other major countries around the world are also seriously considering allowing gambling with control from official regulators, or expanding the industry further in order to generate revenues and create jobs. Two countries are currently of particular interest, namely Japan and Brazil.

Japan

Japan is the only major developed country in the world that does not have a regulated, legal casino industry. While lawmakers have been working to change that since 2002, progress has been very slow going. In fact, it has been extremely difficult to generate any level of support for legislation that has been proposed in the past. Nowadays, however, there is hope that the ‘Land of the Rising Sun’ may be closer than ever to hosting a number of casinos in the country.

The push is gaining momentum because Japan is hosting the Olympics in 2020, and it is believed that having large land-based casinos open during the biggest sporting event on the planet will help generate extra revenues from the huge influx of tourists that the event will likely bring. The plan’s focus has been to allow existing tourist resorts to obtain licenses to open casinos.

Already, several US gaming companies have expressed an interest in being involved in such projects, including Las Vegas Sands Corp, MGM Resorts International, and Wynn Resorts Ltd. They have been lured by forecasts of a Japanese casino industry worth around $6 billion per annum, as well as a country that attracts 3.3 million Chinese visitors each year. Commenting on the situation, Grant Govertsen from the Union Gaming Group said:

“We continue to see mainland Chinese people flocking to aspirational countries, like Japan and Korea, that have relaxed visa requirements. This in turn represents lost customers for Macau’s mass market segment.”

Legislation that would make casinos a reality in Japan is called the Promotional Integrated Resorts Bill. The Japanese National Diet, the country’s bicameral legislature, currently has the Bill in play, but it has not been successfully passed as a law. If successful, the locations for the new casino resorts will likely be Osaka and Tokyo. Still, some insiders believe that it won’t be possible for these new facilities to be open before 2022. If lawmakers end up sharing this opinion, the Promotional Integrated Resorts Bill may be dead in the water.

Brazil

Tourism is one of the major sources of revenue for Brazil, a South American country with a population of 200 million people. Lawmakers are of the opinion that a legalized gambling industry in the country would be a major boon for Brazil, and would attract even more tourists to the nation each year. In fact, experts predict that casinos in Brazil could bring in a whopping $3.7 billion in annual revenues.

Senator Ciro Nogueira has already introduced legislation allowing for land-based casinos to be built in Brazil, known as Bill 186, which would also permit online gambling throughout the country. With Brazil currently under threat from a budget crisis, many industry insiders believe that gambling legislation is becoming a more attractive proposition for lawmakers. So far, these opinions appear to be right, and in December the Special Commission on National Development approved Ciro Nogueira’s bill, so the legislation is currently poised to move forward for an official vote.

Still, there are some skeptics who are a little more pessimistic about the chances of Bill 186 passing. Just last summer, the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, refused to sign another law penned by Senator Nogueira that would have legalized fixed odds betting on sporting events in the country. There is a chance that the president might similarly kill Bill 186 if it reaches her desk.

In the meantime, the only types of gambling permitted in Brazil are those related to horseracing, the lottery, and poker tournaments hosted at land-based venues. As far as online gambling is concerned, the Internet Bill of Rights approved in April 2014 made any companies operating in Brazil subject to the country’s law, with the government reserving the option to block sites it deemed to have contravened its rules. Nevertheless, around 8 million Brazilians are believed to gamble regularly on unlicensed, offshore sites, thus presenting a huge potential market for international operators should regulation ever be approved.