Nagasaki prefecture announced on Friday that it had received five responses for participation in its RFP to develop an integrated resort, with the three-week registration period having concluded last Thursday.
While the identity of the five has not been revealed, four of them are already well known. They include Casinos Austria, Pixel Companyz in collaboration with Groupe Partouche, and a consortium comprising Get Nice Holdings and Current Corp, while the fourth – Oshidori International Development – revealed last week that it had teamed up with Mohegan Gaming & Entertainment for a joint bid.
The prefecture will now examine the participants, and registrants who clear this stage will qualify for the primary examination. The deadline to submit primary examination documents is 1 March.
Once the documents are examined by the committee, up to three participants may be selected for the secondary examination and this will be announced mid-March.
There will then be an appropriateness examination and competitive dialogue with the intention of selecting a construction and operation operator in August. The results of the examination and evaluation process will be announced as soon as a selection is made.
If there are three or fewer participants in the primary stage, this stage will be omitted and all potential operators will move directly to the secondary stage.
Nagasaki, which wants to develop an IR on land alongside Dutch-inspired theme park Huis Ten Bosch in Sasebo City, is one of four candidate locations in Japan. The other three are Yokohama, Osaka and Wakayama.