GGRAsia – Former Macau casino exec speaker at Sasebo IR seminar

Former Macau casino exec speaker at Sasebo IR seminar

Aug 26, 2019 Newsdesk Japan, Latest News, Top of the deck

A former senior casino executive with experience of the Macau market is among the speakers at a seminar on Tuesday (August 27) organised by the Sasebo Chamber of Commerce and the Nagasaki Marine IR Promotion Council.

Niall Murray, president of the Irish Chamber of Commerce of Macau, has held senior casino management posts in several major markets, including in Macau at SJM Holdings Ltd.

In April, the operator of the Huis Ten Bosch theme park in Sasebo and the governments of Sasebo and Nagasaki prefecture struck a deal to have land at the theme park reserved to enable construction of a casino resort there. Such casino complexes are known in the Japanese context as integrated resorts or “IRs”.

The Sasebo seminar was due to attract between 50 and 100 participants including local businesses from Sasebo city, Nagasaki prefecture and the Greater Kyushu region, according to a press release.

“Presentations will include overviews on how the private sector should begin to formulate engagement plans with IR operators, as well as best practices with regards to how other chambers of commerce engage with both IR operators and the local business communities,” added the press notice.

A number of international casino operators – including NagaCorp Ltd and Casinos Austria International – has expressed interest in the joint IR plans of Sasebo and Nagasaki.

Speakers at Tuesday’s event include Glenn McCartney, associate professor in international integrated resort management at the University of Macau, and who is also a member of the Irish Chamber of Commerce of Macau and the European Chamber of Commerce in that city; and Brendan Bussmann, a partner at casino industry consultancy Global Market Advisors LLC and its director of government affairs.

In June at at an event called the Kyushu-Nagasaki IR Business Connect seminar in Sasebo that was attended by GGRAsia, the governor of Nagasaki, Hodo Nakamura, said his area was one of the “most advanced” in Japan in terms of garnering public support for the idea of hosting a casino resort.

To begin with, a maximum of three places in Japan will be allowed to have casino resorts.

Would-be host communities must first find private-sector partners and then make a pitch to the national government about why they should be chosen.