Japan firmly against online casinos in wake of IR project

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has reiterated that Japan will not be looking to legalize online casinos any time soon and confirmed that law enforcement will continue to tackle illegal gambling websites and operations. Delivering his address to a Budget Committee meeting, Kishida received a question from Democratic Party councilman Issei Yamagishi who alerted the prime minister to the increase in the number of illegal gambling websites.

By one estimate, there are around 500 illegal online casinos in Japan as of 2020 when the most recent available data was collated. This is a five-fold increase from the 100 illegal online sites operating in 2014, for example. Yamagishi specifically wanted to know if the proliferation of illegal websites was a harbinger of a policy change in the government.

Yamagishi also alerted the prime minister that there are around 2 million active bettors in such illegal casinos, a high figure by all estimates. The prime minister said that such casinos cannot be allowed to operate and that running them on the territory of Japan constituted a crime. Kishida added that the fight against illegal casinos was carried out by multiple government and law enforcement agencies that we're collaborating with.

Meanwhile, Yamagishi also explored other concerns he had about gambling with the prime minister. One such was the Basic Plan, a piece of legislation created to tackle problem gambling in the country, especially ahead of proposed multi-billion projects known as integrated resorts. Yamagishi specifically wanted to know if the Basic Plan would help people who have suffered because of illegal gambling.

Kishida explained that the plan was designed to assist victims of gambling addiction who become such because of playing in the regulated gambling sector in Japan. However, the prime minister acknowledged that the Basic Plan was mostly needed because of the illegal segment which targeted people and offered poor consumer protection standards.

Yamagishi was critical of Kishida’s efforts to rein in the illegal gambling sector so far, however, and said that pushing ahead with an integrated resort plan considering mounting online gambling issues was not wise. Societal threats continue to persist in Japan, Yamagishi said, with the legal and illegal expansion of gambling bound to take a toll.

Kishida reassured his colleague that the integrated resort projects were multi-purpose investments that would focus on the MICE sector as much as they would on gambling. The prime minister reminded his colleagues that local Japanese citizens would not be admitted to gamble on casino floors in those resorts. He reaffirmed his commitment to tackling illegal gambling and continuing to address problem gambling in the country.

Image credit: EEAS