Las Vegas Sands is happy to be a part of the gambling landscape in Japan, but only if it can have its integrated resort (IR) in a major city. Other, smaller areas may have their purposes, but these don’t align with Sands’ plans, according to the company’s managing director of global development, George Tanasijevich. Apparently, to Sands and Adelson, size does matter.
During a recent interview with GGRAsia during the Japan Gaming Congress 2019 in Tokyo, Tanasijevich asserted that Sands is committed to a “comprehensive and compelling” bid for Osaka, one of the three primary candidate locations for an IR. He added that the company has participated in the recent concept submission process launched by Osaka, which concluded last Friday.
Tanasijevich added that Osaka is the “number one objective” for an IR and that the company’s experience in MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions), as well as entertainment, gives it great potential to be awarded the IR license. He added, “We need to be in a major urban metropolitan area to be able to build a strong and substantial MICE business, for instance, and [for] the scale and the diversity of the entertainment that we bring in.”
The executive further stated that Sands wants to have the IR located where it can easily be reached from “major metropolitan areas, large population bases.” While speaking at the conference, he had touched on Osaka, Tokyo and Yokohama as the three main targets, emphasizing that regional locations could offer “successful integrated resorts,” but that the company’s “scale of investment and our type of operation wouldn’t be appropriate for those locations.”
Osaka will, if the local media outlets are correct, expect an IR to be an investment of at least $8.5 billion and Sands is reportedly ready to break out the checkbook. Tanasijevich told GGRAsia, “We think our business model fits in perfectly there [in Osaka]; that we can satisfy all of the [local and national] government objectives and goals, and we are going to put together a very comprehensive and compelling bid.”
He further added, “The MICE side of it… is a key element of our credentials… There is no IR operator who has a bigger entertainment operation than we do: we have more seats, we have more venues, and we have sold more than anybody else.” The company also has more accusations of buying its way with the authorities.
