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Japan’s ruling party is preparing a legislative amendment to prohibit online casino gambling and associated promotions, as plans to introduce website blocking and public education campaigns are seen as offering limited deterrence.
Momentum continues to build in Japan against its massive underground online casino market, with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government now working with the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), the National Diet’s second-largest party, to bring anti-gambling provisions into the digital era.
The Yomiuri Shimbun daily reported on Monday (May 5) that the parties will soon solicit feedback for a collaborative amendment bill that would prohibit engagement with, and inducement to use, gambling websites.
Japanese police and other law enforcement agencies would then be better equipped when requesting that internet service providers and other carriers remove online gambling ads and posts or shut down promotional spaces, including all-important affiliate websites, the report said.
LDP-CDP cooperation on a legislative crackdown is an ominous development for the illegal online gambling market, given that they are not natural allies.
The report said the LDP’s Research Commission on Public Security, Counter-Terrorism, and Anti-Cybercrime Measures has prepared draft amendments to ban online casinos and will consult with a version developed by their CDP counterparts to fill out the bill, before appealing to other parties for support.
Yomiuri Shimbun sources have said, however, that neither party's version contains amendments to punishment provisions, perhaps reflective of Japan’s long reluctance to inhibit civic freedoms.
At the same time, LDP and CDP lawmakers appear to be acknowledging that a recently proposed website blocking strategy by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, as well as ramping police crackdowns on the underground industry and gamblers, could be hobbled by loopholes in outdated legislation.
A second wind for integrated resorts?
Meanwhile, evidence is growing of central government enthusiasm for a supplementary tender for integrated resorts (IRs).
With MGM Resorts International’s Osaka resort well under construction, several prefectures have continued to express interest to the central government in a renewed tender for two more IR licences allowed under the law.
The Hokkaido Shimbun daily reported on Tuesday (May 6) that second and third licences could be issued by 2027, and that central government selection work for candidate sites could proceed after the House of Councillors (Senate) elections in July this year.
However, Japanese media are yet to extensively address the same obstacles posed by inflexible, one-size-fits-all legislation, and by regional hostility toward gambling, that scuttled the proposals of all but one gambling company and its consortium.
