{"id":17841,"date":"2021-05-13T14:27:56","date_gmt":"2021-05-13T14:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=17841"},"modified":"2026-04-23T19:35:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T22:35:40","slug":"japan-suncity-group-withdraws-from-wakayama-ir-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/japan-suncity-group-withdraws-from-wakayama-ir-bid","title":{"rendered":"Japan: Suncity Group withdraws from Wakayama IR bid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Wakayama&#8217;s IR bid is at risk after Suncity Group&#8217;s decision to pull out of the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Japan.- A week after the\u00a0<strong>Wakayama IR Promotion Council<\/strong>\u00a0urged the prefecture to<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>quickly choose a private partner for its IR bid, Suncity Group has decided to withdraw from the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now there is only one remaining applicant to become the prefecture&#8217;s private partner of its bid \u2013 <strong>Clairvest Group<\/strong>. That leaves Wakayama in a similar situation as Osaka, which also has just one contender for its IR bid \u2013\u00a0<strong>MGM-Orix<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the worst case scenario, Wakayama\u00a0<strong>could even lose the chance to bid for an IR licence<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Suncity Group\u00a0<\/strong>had seemed to be highly committed to bidding for the Wakayama <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/suncity-opens-wakayama-ir-office\">IR<\/a>\u00a0development after\u00a0<strong>opening offices <\/strong>last September and assigning a budget of between US$3.9bn and US$4.5bn for the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to local media, Alvin Chau, Suncity Group Chairman, said\u00a0<strong>the company has made this decision due to uncertainty caused by the impact of the Covid-19\u00a0<\/strong>pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chau alo said: &#8220;T<strong>he IR certification process in Japan appears set to take a lot longer than expected<\/strong>. Many things remain unclear, but we must consider the risks as a business operator.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wakayama&#8217;s IR bid is at risk after Suncity Group&#8217;s decision to pull out of the process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":17854,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Suncity Group has withdrawn its bid for Wakayama's Integrated Resort (IR) development in Japan, citing COVID-19 uncertainty and prolonged certification timelines. This leaves Clairvest Group as the sole remaining applicant, mirroring Osaka's situation with MGM-Orix, and potentially jeopardizing Wakayama's IR license opportunity.","focusai_entities":"Suncity Group, Wakayama IR Promotion Council, Clairvest Group, MGM-Orix, Alvin Chau","focusai_location":"Japan, Wakayama, Osaka","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (0.95), regulator (0.9), operator_casino (0.9), investor_analyst (0.95), supplier_vendor (0.75), journalist_researcher (0.9)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Wakayama IR viability?","query":"What are the implications for Wakayama's IR bid viability and the overall Japanese IR development timeline now that Suncity Group has withdrawn, leaving only one contender?"},{"label":"Regulatory process impact?","query":"How might the cited 'prolonged certification process' and 'uncertainty' influence the Japanese government's approach to future IR regulatory frameworks and timelines?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,16338,158],"tags":[23632,23907,23702],"class_list":["post-17841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-casino-news","category-east-asia-news","category-slider-home","tag-integrated-resorts","tag-land-based-casino","tag-suncity-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17867,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17841\/revisions\/17867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}