According to the Statistics Survey on Specific Service Industries conducted by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, pachinko hall sales in July stood at JPY232.89 billion (US$2.20 billion), equal to 78.8% of sales in July last year.
The numbers suggest an ongoing recovery trend after May 2020 pachinko sales fell to just JPY66.58 billion (US$630.4 million) – around 22.5% of the corresponding month in 2019. June began to show improvement at 68.7% of June 2019 levels.
Nevertheless, year-on-year sales have now been decreasing for 13 consecutive months, with the COVID-19 pandemic simply casting further shadows over the industry’s struggles.
While some players have returned following the pandemic, an executive of a pachinko chain operating multiple outlets in Tokyo told IAG, “Customers aren’t all returning, making things tough. There’s nothing we can do.”
But there have been days where over 2,000 patrons have visited popular halls, suggesting that the gap between pachinko halls themselves is widening.
The main purpose of the survey was to understand business trends such as sales in specific service industries.
The survey targets those companies with the highest sales, covering about 70% of the annual sales in the target industry, but this does not cover all pachinko hall operators. Therefore, the figures in this survey differ significantly from the actual sales of the entire pachinko hall industry.
However, because the survey is conducted monthly using the same method, it is appropriate to understand trends in the industry.
Of the 30% of operators with the lowest sales not included in the survey, it seems that many companies have gone bankrupt due to poor sales or closed their doors due to a decrease in operations, so the actual rate of decrease in sales for the entire industry may be even greater than these figures show.
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