Last year, the Japanese Diet passed a law making casino gambling legal and lawmakers are set to consider legislation to deal with the practical issues associated with developing casino resorts, with a number of international gaming operators keen to expand into the country. But the arrival of casino gambling could be bad news for those involved in the pachinko industry.
Pachinko – a kind of pinball machine – has always been extremely popular in Japan. Tightly regulated, it is one of the handful of gaming activities that have been permitted, and by far the biggest. But the number of people playing the game has declined dramatically.
Back in 1995, there were 30 million pachinko players, spending around ¥30 ($0.27) trillion on the game, but by last year that customer base had shrunk to 10 million players, while the revenue generated by the nation’s 10,000 pachinko parlors was ¥22 ($0.19) trillion.
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