He was speaking to GGRAsia at casino industry trade show Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025, held earlier this month in Macau.

Explaining how the new product built on the good name of the company’s “Baccarat Maximum Fortune”, Mr Lee explained: “We enhanced it with an ability to skip three hands to produce more trends for players to decide [on their wager].” That compares to a one-hand skip function on the original.

Mr Lee stated: “Baccarat players look for ‘trends’ to play – whether it’s ‘banker’ [bet] or ‘player’ [bet].”

While the game has the upright look of a slot, it actually has the gameplay of an electronic table game.

The Asia sales boss added that players at live-dealer baccarat tables, will often “walk around tables” on a floor, looking for “a specific trend, and then they play together,” with friends.

He explained, referring to the ability to skip up to three baccarat hands on a single unit of the company’s new game: “By having this feature, we believe that players will bet more.

“It will generate much higher turnover and translate to higher windfall to the casino.”

All about ‘trends’

Sega Sammy Creation has also developed animated signage for Baccarat Maximum Fortune Premium, designed to serve as “reminders” for players regarding perceived ‘trends’ in play.

“We try to create some element of reminders – some indication for players to see that a certain [baccarat game] result hasn’t appeared for some time,” explained Mr Lee, noting that such function could help induce players to wager more in the game.

The baccarat side bet options Lucky 7 and Super Luck 7 – introduced in the traditional live gaming format in Macau last year – will also be added to Baccarat Maximum Fortune Premium, and the existing Baccarat Maximum Fortune product – subject to Macau regulatory approval – possibly “by September” this year, Mr Lee also mentioned.

Baccarat Maximum Fortune has already been particularly successful in Macau, states Mr Lee. He thinks that has been helped by Macau’s generally-high minimum bet levels across traditional baccarat tables. That has opened up space for more “affordable” play options.

“Seeing the demographic of tourists coming in – they are getting younger. So… maybe they want to try baccarat; but they feel intimidated at the [traditional live] table, which is so crowded,” remarked Mr Lee, referring to the Macau market.

Another “intimidating” scenario for novel players in table game baccarat, is daring to bet on an option different from the rest of the players present. “That’s where we come in,” Mr Lee stated.

He also noted: “Baccarat itself is a very straightforward game. So… by adding more elements of surprise or higher odds, and then some fun animation, hopefully we can draw in new players.”

Another Sega Sammy Creation attention-grabber at the trade show was the slot game “Prosperity Peaks”, described as the latest in the brand’s “Extreme Wild” series and designed “specifically for the Asian market”, according to the supplier’s pre-G2E Asia show corporate materials.

Prosperity Peaks – featuring the graphic motifs of pots of golden coins and the Chinese god of fortune – has a similar play mechanic to Sega Sammy Creation’s existing slot game, “Extreme Wild – Lanterns”, the latter a “successful” game, Mr Lee mentioned.

A major feature for Prosperity Peaks is the “Dice Wild Feature”, triggered when dice symbols appearing on reels 1 and 5; the two dice symbols will then roll, and determine the number of positions that change to wild.

“Vietnam is, obviously, an emerging jurisdiction, and as such, it has all the pains of trying to find its [own] way,” Mr Mesquita de Melo (pictured second right) said.

“The current regulatory system in Vietnam is still very unsophisticated and immature, and therefore there are a lot of loopholes, which create significant challenges – especially for legal practitioners trying to understand the system,” he added.

Mr Mesquita de Melo’s comments were made on Friday, during a panel discussion titled “The Latest Compliance Issues Faced by Gaming Operators”. It formed part of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025 casino trade show and conference. The three-day event at the Venetian Macao casino resort concluded on Friday.

During his remarks, Mr Mesquita de Melo explained that Vietnam’s gaming decree – the country’s “main piece of legislation” in this field – was enacted in early 2017.

“That framework should have been developed and completed with a number of subsequent regulations, which actually never happened,” he added.

The legal expert – who also has extensive experience in the Macau market – stated that “one of the biggest problems” gaming businesses face in Vietnam is the lack of an official gaming regulatory body.

He added: “Vietnam, being a civil law system, has a very specific approach to the rule of law in the sense that the law is not ever really applied until it becomes the object of an administrative decision. This means that for everything you want to do, there is this mindset that you have to ask the government how to do it.”

He further stated: “This obviously creates an additional layer of problems, in the sense that you never really know how the law is going to be interpreted. And when the law itself is very unsophisticated and incomplete from a legal standpoint, it creates huge problems.”

“At the end of the day, that means that whatever you want to do, you need to get approval from, I would say, at least eight ministries,” the Hoiana general counsel said.

An example provided by Mr Mesquita de Melo was related to Vietnam’s pilot programme allowing locals to gamble at designated casinos. In the country, casino gambling is currently only permitted for foreign passport holders.

The only operational property included in the programme permitting Vietnamese citizens to gamble, Corona Resort & Casino in Phu Quoc, announced in December it would “temporarily suspend” the scheme on January 1 “until further notice”.

“We have really no insight into what the government is going to do with regard to local gaming,” Mr Mesquita de Melo said.

Singapore’s ‘gold standard’, Macau’s challenges

Also present at the panel was Kok-Keng Lau (pictured right), partner at Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP. He noted that Singapore’s gambling regulatory landscape was “probably one of the most stringent in the world”.

“We are widely regarded as having arguably set the ‘gold standard’ for gambling regulation,” he added.

According to him, one reason for the city-state’s tight regulation is the fact that, “unlike other regulated gambling markets around the world, Singapore does not seek market expansion.”

Pedro Cortés (pictured second left), managing partner at the Macau-based Lektou Law Firm, discussed the regulatory challenges faced by Macau as its gaming industry transitions from a VIP-centric model to one in which the mass market takes precedence.

He noted that, from a regulatory and compliance standpoint, the focus is no longer on monitoring VIP rooms, but instead on overseeing casino cashiers and cages. Operators “need to monitor lower-value, but high-volume” transactions, he said.

Mr Cortés suggested that casinos could use technology to assist in monitoring this type of activity, including artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“One of the things Aristocrat did coming out of the pandemic was to make an enormous commitment to this region,” he said. “Asia was identified as a high-growth region and, with that, came additional investment into Asia – firstly from a product point of view, but also from a people and infrastructure perspective.”

Mr Robson said the refreshed approach to the Asian markets “allowed not just a broader portfolio and commitment of games to Asia, but also the development of products specifically built for the region”.

He added: “That has really driven our product performance in the Philippines, Singapore, and Macau. We are also the market leader in Vietnam and Cambodia.”

His comments were made during the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025 casino trade show and conference. The three-day event at the Venetian Macao casino resort concluded on Friday (May 9).

“We’ve put a lot of new roles and infrastructure into Asia,” Mr Robson said. “The team we have today versus the team we had three years ago is nearly double in size.”

The Aristocrat executive highlighted that, since the end of the pandemic, the firm has strengthened its presence in the Philippines by opening an office and showroom, while also renovating its Macau office.

“We’ve introduced a lot of new capabilities to the structure, particularly around our analytics and marketing functions. So, we’re really starting to partner and work with operators in a very different way,” Mr Robson said.

Return on square foot

At G2E Asia, a significant part of the portfolio on display at Aristocrat’s booth was either newly-developed for Asia or market-tuned content tailored to the region, according to the executive.

One of the product highlights at the trade show was the brand’s MarsX Slim cabinet, making its Asian casino trade show debut.

Mr Robson explained that the cabinet is already available in several Asian markets, including Macau and the Philippines. It is a more compact version of the larger MarsX cabinet, and was developed based on operator feedback – initially for Singapore.

“In essence, it allows you to deploy more units in the same amount of real estate as you could with the standard MarsX,” he said.

“It has really enabled operators to look at their slot floor with a different metric. Traditionally, machines or games have been measured by win per unit per day. This marks a shift in the dialogue towards return on square foot.”

He added: “If you’re able to unlock more real estate or more casino floor space by deploying additional units, then there’s a high likelihood you’ll generate more revenue from the same footprint. That was the logic behind MarsX Slim.”

“The Asia-Pacific region is very important for us, and we are launching the Raptor cabinet here,” stated Troy Primmer (pictured), Ainsworth’s president for Asia Pacific.

“We launched that in Australia in February, and it’s been a resounding success. It’s currently being approved in the Philippines and it’s going through the approval stages in other markets in the region,” he added.

The Raptor Dual Screen cabinet was designed to increase player engagement and drive operational performance, according to the Australia-based company.

“Designed with both players and operators in mind, it ensures enhanced engagement, durability, and operational efficiency,” it added.

Ainsworth stated that its game development strategy for 2025 “emphasises simplicity and trending mechanisms,” including “Cash on Reels,” “Hold N Spin,” and “Credit Collection”.

The Raptor Dual Screen cabinet features three 32-inch, high-definition monitors, as well as what the company describes as a “unique” cylindrical display for player tracking, along with a cylindrical above-monitor speaker for an “immersive sound” experience.

“This new cabinet will take us through many years now. So, we certainly want to get those [units] out in the market,” said Mr Primmer.

He was speaking to GGRAsia during the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025, a major casino industry trade show and conference taking place in Macau through to Friday.

At the G2E Asia event, Ainsworth also displayed its Raptor J Curve cabinet. It features a 49-inch J-Curve monitor with a 27-inch topper, above an 18.5-inch touchscreen button deck.

The executive said feedback during G2E Asia was “really good”.

“People really love the hardware, they commented on the lighting, the large button panel, the 32-inch monitors on the dual screens,” he added.

Mr Primmer said: “It’s been received really well by the players in Australia, and we’re sure it will be in Asia as well.”

The Ainsworth representative said the company aims to expand its installations in markets across the Asia-Pacific region, chiefly in Philippine integrated resorts (IRs) that offer casino play.

“This year we’ll be looking to get Raptors installed through all the IRs there. It really is new territory for us in Asia because we don’t [yet] have any installed” there, he added.

Mr Primmer said the cabinets would be complemented by titles developed for Asia.

“We’ve started to launch products out of our studio in Sydney, specifically for the Asian market, rather than just bringing the Australian games,” he explained.

He added: “We’re still bringing some of our Australian studio games, and U.S. studio games, particularly for the portrait cabinet. But we’ve got a few games in our portfolio, [where] we’ve changed the math and art elements specifically for the Asian market.”

The latest development was outlined by Maulin Gandhi (pictured), president of Tangam Systems, on the sidelines of Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025, a major casino industry trade show and conference taking place in Macau through to Friday.

SODA is described by the company as “a data-driven solution that helps casinos maximise slot revenue, efficiency, and player engagement” through real-time analytics and automated insights.

“SODA is primarily for slots. SODA Plus is combining table games data as well, into SODA,” Mr Gandhi said in an interview with GGRAsia. “Our goal is for SODA to become the platform for analytics, bringing together all the information for marketing analytics, operations analytics, and optimisation. It consolidates data from all the different sources into one platform.”

The new platform is expected to enter the market within the year. “We’re in the middle of early trials and … probably in the next two to three months, we’ll have our first few customers using it,” he stated.

Mr Gandhi believes the new system can help gaming operators better understand and enhance property performance. “Today’s world is very complex. We need a whole army of analysts looking at data from each product category to understand what actually improved or didn’t meet the expectations,” he said.

“What we’re able to do is analyse all that data and come up with the exact insights into what drives the performance at the property, without someone having to manually go through all of it,” he added.

SODA has already seen strong uptake in several Asian markets where slot machines represent a significant portion of gaming revenue, such as the Philippines and Cambodia. For instance, major casino resorts in the Philippines – including Okada Manila and Newport World Resorts – have installed the system.

Tangam Systems is also looking to expand into markets such as Vietnam and South Korea. The firm has been happy to see two Macau casino operators adopt SODA, despite the city’s overwhelming focus on baccarat.

The interest in slot optimisation in Macau, as Mr Gandhi explained, is partly driven by regulatory constraints. Since 2023, the Macau government has capped the number of gaming machines in the local market at 12,000, coinciding with the start of new 10-year gaming concessions for the city’s six operators. Before the Covid-19 pandemic and the formal cap, Macau boasted more than 17,000 slots in 2019.

“If you have less capacity, you want to make sure that each slot machine is operating at maximum potential,” he said.

Apart from SODA, Tangam Systems also offers its TYM (Table Games Yield Management) solution. According to Mr Gandhi, analytics and optimisation tools for table games are increasingly in demand, driven in part by the growing adoption of smart table technology.

“The big question for a lot of operators is that, traditionally, they never had high-quality data coming from table games because it was manually entered,” sometimes in a “not very accurate” manner, he said.

“Now they’re getting a firehose of data from each table,” he continued. “Ultimately, operators don’t want more data; they just want answers – which is where we come in.”

In today’s more competitive environment, data analytics have become essential. “Casinos now have to do a lot more to maintain or grow their market share,” said the Tangam president.

“To be more competitive, they have to dig deeper into analytics to find out where they lack and what they need to optimise in their existing offerings to continue to grow both in revenue and in market share,” he added.

Lloyd Robson (pictured second left), vice president of sales and operations for Asia at Aristocrat Gaming, was speaking on Thursday on a panel called ‘EGM Trends: Navigating Growth, Innovation, and Regulation, in Asia’s Evolving Markets,’ at the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia trade exhibition and conference, held at the Venetian Macao.

Mr Robson stated: “This is a growing region. It’s about 70,000 machines now. When you look out another three or four years, it’s probably more like 80,000 to 85,000.”

New land-based casino resorts are still launching within the region, with one of the most prominent under development being the JPY1.27-trillion (US$8.80-billion currently) MGM Osaka, in Japan, due to launch in 2030.

Mr Robson acknowledged that competition for market share was strong for Aristocrat Gaming, the business segment of Australia-listed Aristocrat Leisure Ltd that serves land-based casinos.

The Aristocrat executive stated: “We as an organisation generally commit to 10 percent to 12 percent of our top-line revenue back to R&D [research and development], to try to keep moving the industry forward.”

Ken Jolly (pictured, second right), managing director Asia for another of the big suppliers to the region, Light & Wonder Inc, noted that the 12,000-machine cap in the Macau market, made it more difficult for smaller gaming machine suppliers to break into the casino sector there.

“It’s getting much harder in Macau for a smaller manufacturer to survive. The reason being that with a 12,000-machine cap, we see a faster demand [from operators] for changing machines in Macau,” he observed.

Dallas Orchard (pictured right), senior vice president and chief operating officer for Asia Pacific at International Game Technology Plc (IGT), noted that in the Macau market, “a lot” of senior people at the operators “were for the first time ever… saying that they think there’s more demand than supply” among casino players in terms of gaming machine product, because “players are looking for something different”.

The panel also explored whether growth in remote play on slots was influencing what consumers wanted from a land-based casino slot. In the Philippines, online gaming aimed at domestic consumers is licensed via distribution channels including real-time cameras linked to physical machines of land-based casinos.

Jerry Chan (pictured centre) is senior vice president of electronic gaming and special projects at Philippine casino resort Okada Manila, which has a so-called Philippine Inland Gaming Operator (PIGO) licence, permitting players to access remotely, play on physical casino machines.

He stated that in his view, online slot players had “not yet truly transferred into the land-based format, but eventually they will”.

The three-day event is taking place until Friday (May 9) at the Venetian Macao casino resort.

The new tool, called ‘Synergy Search’ (pictured), integrates with Synectics’ security and surveillance platform, Synergy. A number of casino properties in Asia use Synectics’ surveillance products.

Through Synergy Search, casino operators “are able to run forensic searches in the videos,” using server-based analytics, said Ee Li Chong, Synectics’ systems solutions manager, in an interview with GGRAsia.

“There are a lot of different types of queries available to support the search,” she explained. “You can actually run free-text searches,” based on object classification.

The product is described as the first of its kind offered by Synectics.

The company representative added that the tool enables clients to locate desired footage more quickly, as opposed to manually reviewing lengthy video feeds. “This automates that finding process,” Ms Ee said.

The new tool was developed in response to customer feedback, she added

“A lot of [customers] – not only from the gaming sector, but also from oil, gas and other industries – have asked for analytics, asked for forensic search,” she stated.

Synectics said in late January that it had been awarded a “further contract” worth approximately US$2.2 million, regarding “professional services” for the “upgrade and expansion” of its Synergy surveillance system at a “major gaming resort in Southeast Asia”.

In December last year, the firm announced it had secured four separate contracts from gaming-sector clients, with a combined value of US$2.7 million. Two of those clients are “leading gaming resorts” in the Philippines, the company stated at the time.

That was the message on Wednesday by participants at a panel session of the conference segment of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025 casino industry trade show in Macau.

In early April, Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, asked for a postponement of a reading of the Entertainment Complex Bill in parliament, due to more urgent government business.

The two main coalition parties have insisted there is no split between them regarding the casino legalisation, as public opposition against the policy gained traction ahead of the vote that had been scheduled for April 9.

“The government has made missteps by not probably doing enough research, preparation and communication prior to moving ahead with the political process of legalisation,” said Paul Bromberg, senior vice president for investigations, Asia, at Spectrum Gaming Group.

“They’ve come out and said, for instance, that they’re going to do in-depth feasibility studies, economic impact analysis, etc., once the law has passed,” he stated.

“I think it would’ve been far better for them to have done that first, not only so that they understand better what they should be doing, but also because it would give confidence to the public,” Mr Bromberg told the audience during the panel titled “Trends in Asia Gaming Markets”.

He added: “They should have given a lot more consideration as to the regulation of a casino industry and transparency to the process. Now the government is addressing some of these issues in public, but it remains to be seen what happens next and whether people will actually believe what they’re being told.”

Ed Bowers, president of global development at casino operator MGM Resorts International, observed that each jurisdiction “needs to craft its own laws based on the nuances of what their existing policies are, and the objectives that they specifically want to get out of this” process.

The management of MGM Resorts has said that any investment in Thailand by the MGM brand was likely to come via MGM China Holdings Ltd.

Expectations versus reality

On Wednesday, Mr Bowers stated: “The biggest thing that I would say about any jurisdiction is they need to really arm themselves with knowledge about our industry. That means doing a feasibility study beforehand, so that you kind of know what the expectations need to be.”

According to Vitaly Umansky, senior research analyst for global gaming at Seaport Research Partners, the Thai government “needs to figure out what it is they actually want from this process first, and then lay it out in a way where investors can come in and understand whether or not it’ll be a viable investment”.

Mr Umansky noted: “If the government wants a large-scale industry with job creation, tax revenue, and tourism, the rules have to be such that allow an investor to come in and spend billions of dollars with adequate returns related to the risk of a new market, in order to actually do what the government hopes to have done.”

Niall Murray, founder and chairman at Murray International Group, observed that newer markets “have a better chance” of achieving a more balanced ratio between revenue generated by the non-gaming and gaming segments.

“I think newer markets, if they come from that perspective [deriving more revenue from non-gaming activities], they’ll have a better chance of getting the regulations passed,” he stated.

Dhruv Garg, partner at Indian Governance & Policy Project, was also part of the panel, which was moderated by Fredric Gushin, managing director and chief executive of Spectrum Gaming.

Thailand’s prime minister said in recent comments that MPs from her Pheu Thai Party had been given the job of explaining to the country’s people the “great national benefit” of having tourism resorts with casinos.

Mr Bromberg said the Thai government “has been reasonably aggressive actually over the last couple of weeks” in terms of promoting the casino policy. “The prime minister has come out and tried to explain a little bit more of what an integrated resort is,” he noted.

The consultant added: “There’s been a lack of communication on the government’s part, and they need to have more public debates about the merits, the benefits, and the negative aspects of having a casino industry.”

According to comments to GGRAsia by Akkaraporn Muangsobha, a Thailand-based lawyer familiar with the legalisation process, the first reading of the bill might only be in July at the earliest. He and another commentator think any bidding and licensing phase for Thai casinos might now only happen in 2027.

That is one suggestion of gaming sector analyst Praveen Choudhary (pictured), managing director at Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd.

He was speaking on Wednesday at a conference session on the opening day of the Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia 2025 casino trade event held at the Venetian Macao.

One reason “is called promotions,” Mr Choudhary told the session audience. “Basically, because the business was premium mass and casinos had to throw money for promotions to bring that and fight for market share, it eroded the margin.”

Market GGR rose year-on-year in the first four months of this year, to MOP76.51 billion (US$9.57 billion) albeit at a sluggish 0.8 percent rate, show government data. Last year, Macau’s market-wide GGR grew by 23.9 percent year-on-year to MOP226.78 billion.

Mr Choudhary observed in terms of the evolving structure of the market: “The [GGR] contribution of mass has gone from 27 percent in 2011 to 75 percent now [first quarter this year],” which should have translated into mass business contributing circa “four times higher margin than VIP”, and hence a stronger driver to the gaming sector’s earnings. This had not happened.

He cited historical margins of “30 percent or 35 percent” on mass play, versus “5 percent to 10 percent” on VIP.

He noted: “This is a significant problem with our financial modelling, and this is one of the reasons why [Macau gaming] stocks have not done as well as people thought after Covid.”  

Property EBITDA trends

Another metric, market-wide property earnings before interest, taxation, appreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin had gone down 0.5 percentage points year-on-year in 2024, to 23.7 percent, he observed.

The Macau gaming industry’s property EBITDA had grown steadily between 2011 and 2019, noted the Morgan Stanley analyst.

“Currently we are running at 1 percent,” annual GGR growth, “and I’m predicting that [sector] EBITDA will be down by maybe 5 to 10 percent,” stated Mr Choudhary.

The analyst stated, referring to the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) a mainland China exit visa system for independent travellers, thought by commentators usually to bring higher-spending Chinese tourists to Macau: “The IVS [individual visit scheme] visa scheme improved, and a lot of people could come to Macau, but [gaming] revenue did not,” improve greatly.

He added that while Macau was “getting a lot of people…a lot of day trippers…. the quality of the customers is not great.

“It has to do with China’s economy and [U.S.] tariffs… and [China’s] GDP, and deflation: all those macro situations,” remarked the Morgan Stanley analyst.

“You can see many [hotel] rooms were added to the Macau market “post-Covid [19], and they have not had as much impact on their [respective operators’] revenue and profitability,” the Morgan Stanley analyst stated.

“That’s definitely hurting the market. Obviously, there’s a little bit of a demand issue as well.”

The Macau gaming sector’s post-pandemic return on invested capital (ROIC) had been trending downward, said Mr Choudhary: from 22.2 percent in 2018 and 21.5 percent in 2019, to 12.1 percent in 2023 and 12.9 percent in 2024.

Though he suggested non-gaming capital expenditure – an element in the six operators’ pledges to the Macau government under their 10-year concessions that started in 2023 – had produced only marginal impact on the sector’s ROIC.

He also noted that while most Macau casino firms had a lower staff count compared to 2019, they were now all bearing higher reinvestment costs.

Among all these factors, the Macau industry’s “earnings revision has been negative across the board, for the last 15 months,” said Mr Choudhary.

So far, only one such IR – the MGM Osaka – has been approved, even though Japan’s enabling framework had anticipated up to three licences being issued.

MGM Resorts and Japan’s Orix Corp are the two main partners in the consortium developing MGM Osaka. The project also involves a number of other Japanese businesses as minority investors.

Japan’s national government is said to have a policy aim of starting this year a fresh process round for new IR licences, with the hope of approving “by December 2027” as many as two new locations. GGRAsia had reported in March – based on multiple sources – that the new application process proper might start in 2026.

“Given Japan’s methodical approach to this [licensing process], this will likely take time, and I do not anticipate any new concession awards for at least the next two to three years, judging by the speed of which the first concession was awarded,” stated Mr Bowers.

He made the remarks during a speech on Wednesday, on the first day of this year’s Global Gaming Expo (G2E) Asia event in Macau.

A ground breaking ceremony for MGM Osaka was held on April 24. Construction of the complex is expected to be completed in the summer of 2030, with the opening scheduled for around autumn of that same year.

The casino project – which has been described by MGM Resorts as a JPY1.27-trillion (US$8.86-billion currently) venture overall – is being developed at Yumeshima, an artificial island in Osaka Bay.

“We already have ongoing site work and preparatory construction work,” confirmed Mr Bowers on Wednesday.

According to the executive, the project will feature three hotels providing in total approximately 2,500 rooms, a 3,500-seat theatre, and “various Japanese cultural experiences”, as well as a large number of food and drink outlets, and shops.

“The casino will accommodate 470 table games and 6,400 slot machines and would likely be one of the highest-revenue generating casinos in the world,” observed Mr Bowers.

He said MGM Osaka’s benefit to the economy “will be considerable,” with significant contributions to the local authorities, namely via casino taxation.

“We expect the project to contribute approximately JPY106 billion [US$739.6 million currently] annually to the city,” stated Mr Bowers. “We’re also contributing equal amounts to Japan’s national government.”

According to the executive, the MGM Osaka project “has had to deal with the overly complex regulatory and legal framework established in Japan” regarding the development of IRs in the country. Another challenge, he added, was the “rising construction costs” for the project.

In late April, Jonathan Halkyard, MGM Resorts’ chief financial officer, said the company’s equity commitment for MGM Osaka had increased to JPY428 billion.

“We now have remaining about JPY392 billion to invest for our future 43.5-percent ownership stake” in MGM Osaka, stated the CFO.

“Despite the increase driven by updated spend estimates as we finalised our negotiations with contractors, we still have a high conviction in a high-teens percentage return on this project and remain on time to open in 2030,” he added.

Mr Halkyard also said the casino group had “already hedged over half” of its commitments to the project in the “forward yen markets,” in order “to lock in some of these favourable exchange rates”.

He added: “So, we’re all fully hedged through the middle of 2027 in terms of our equity contributions.”

On Wednesday, Mr Bowers said: “Going forward, I believe the major challenges will be securing post-opening labour, and working constructively with Japan’s regulators to ensure that the operating environment adheres to other countries best practices and is not uniquely restricted.”