In pursuing Japan, Mohegans playing in big leagues
When Japan’s parliament voted last week to authorize the country’s first three casinos, big-time gaming operators in the U.S. turned cartwheels.
Las Vegas Sands Corp., MGM Resorts International, Wynn Resorts and others have long been eager to tap a market that experts believe could become as lucrative as Las Vegas and Macau, China, which now dominate the industry. And don’t forget Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment, the Mohegan Sun parent, which expects to break ground this year on an integrated resort casino project in South Korea.
“Our moves into Asia are both aspirational and transformational for this company,” Kevin Brown, the Mohegan tribal chairman and head of the MGE management board, said in an interview Wednesday. “We’re just outside the bubble those big companies are in, but our Korea investment is our way in. We’ll be open there by the time anything opens in Japan. It’ll give us a foothold in Northeast Asia — separate from Southern Asia, from Macau."
“We ain’t afraid,” he quipped, acknowledging the stiff competition.
Mario Kontomerkos, MGE’s chief executive officer, said the Japan parliament’s passage Friday of the Integrated Resort Implementation Act was not unexpected. The law, he said, provides for regulatory bodies to establish a licensing process that could take up to two years. Then, it could take several more years for those who win licenses to secure financing, design and build casinos, pushing openings into the mid-2020s.
By then, MGE figures to be the biggest casino operator in Northeast Asia by virtue of Project Inspire, its $1.6 billion integrated resort in Incheon, South Korea, Kontomerkos said. The project, originally scheduled to debut in 2021, will include multiple hotel towers, a 15,000-seat arena, an indoor-outdoor amusement park and a 20,000-square-foot casino.
“We’ll be open in time to feed the Japan market,” Kontomerkos said.
MGE executives confirmed in May that they’d been meeting for some time with government officials and business interests in Japan, indicating they intended to seek a gaming license. Representatives of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, which owns and operates Foxwoods Resort Casino, also have traveled to Japan.
“We’ve made our interest known,” as have a number of jurisdictions and potential host municipalities in Japan, Kontomerkos said, adding that MGE now will step up its presence in the country.
If there’s an early favorite, it may be Las Vegas Sands, which already operates casinos in Macau and Singapore.
“We believe that Las Vegas Sands is in the strongest position to obtain a license and remains extremely well positioned to grow,” Moody’s Investors Service commented this week.
In a statement, MGM Resorts said it has a full-time development team in Japan and “for the past four years has been engaged in discussions in Japan's cultural and business communities.”
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