A casino resort planned for construction in Osaka will open around the fall of 2030, about a year behind schedule, the Osaka prefectural government said Tuesday.
The so-called integrated resort, or IR, comprised of a large hotel, conference facilities and gambling areas, was previously scheduled to open between the fall and winter of 2029.
But the central government's approval process of the IR plan put forward by the Osaka prefectural and city governments took longer to complete than expected.
The plan to build a casino resort on Yumeshima, an artificial island in Osaka Bay, was approved in April. It is the first IR to get the go-ahead in Japan since the nation legalized casinos in 2018 in hopes of boosting tourism and regional economies.
The liberalized gambling laws permit three IR complexes to be built in Japan, but Osaka and Nagasaki Prefecture remain the only locations to have applied to host one.
Reflecting higher material costs, the total price tag of the Osaka casino resort project is now estimated to be 1.27 trillion yen ($8.7 billion), up from the previous figure of 1.08 trillion yen.
MGM Resorts International and Orix Corp., major shareholders of the project's operator Osaka IR KK, will split the additional costs evenly.
The casino plan submitted by Nagasaki Prefecture in southwestern Japan is still under review.
