{"id":777027259,"date":"2025-06-03T09:12:02","date_gmt":"2025-06-03T12:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/?p=777027259"},"modified":"2026-04-21T22:19:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T01:19:02","slug":"japans-lower-house-approves-bill-to-ban-online-casinos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/japans-lower-house-approves-bill-to-ban-online-casinos","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s lower house approves bill to ban online casinos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The proposed legislation bans the promotion of online casino sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Japan.- Japan’s House of Representatives has approved a bill to amend the Basic Law for Countermeasures against Gambling Addiction that would ban operating and promoting online casinos in the country. The legislation passed with a majority vote and will now be debated in the House of Councillors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s expected that the proposal will be enacted during the current parliamentary session. Both national and local governments would publicise the illegality of online casinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May, the Council for Sports Ecosystem Promotion (C-SEP)\u00a0reported that bettors in Japan wagered about\u00a0JPY6.45tn (US$45bn)\u00a0on offshore sports betting sites in 2024, including JPY1tn (US$6.94bn) on domestic sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An estimated JPY528bn (US$3.68bn) was wagered on\u00a0pro baseball, JPY333.4bn (US$2.32bn) on\u00a0soccer\u00a0and JPY87bn (US$606m) on\u00a0basketball, according to estimates from The Council for Sports Ecosystem Promotion (C-SEP). In March, the\u00a0National Police Agency (NPA)\u00a0said 3.37 million people in the country<\/a>\u00a0had gambled at online casinos, spending around JPY1.24tn (US$8.4bn) annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some players from professional baseball teams are facing legal action for gambling on online casinos. Nippon Professional Baseball has fined 16 people from eight teams a total of JPY 10.2m (US$75,175).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The proposed legislation bans the promotion of online casino sites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":777027107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"is_press_release":false,"is_interview":false,"is_opinion":false,"focusai_summary":"Japan's House of Representatives has approved a bill to amend the Basic Law for Countermeasures against Gambling Addiction, effectively banning the operation and promotion of online casinos. This legislation, expected to be enacted during the current parliamentary session, will mandate national and local governments to publicise the illegality of online casinos. The move follows significant offshore sports betting and online casino expenditure by Japanese consumers, alongside recent enforcement actions against professional athletes.","focusai_entities":"House of Representatives, House of Councillors, Council for Sports Ecosystem Promotion (C-SEP), National Police Agency (NPA), Nippon Professional Baseball","focusai_location":"Japan","focusai_target_profile":"ceo_executive (1.0), regulator (1.0), compliance_legal (1.0), operator_casino (1.0), affiliate_publisher (1.0), product_ux (0.7), tech_data (0.7), marketing_crm (1.0), payments_fraud_aml (0.9), investor_analyst (1.0), supplier_vendor (1.0), journalist_researcher (1.0)","focusai_suggestions":[{"label":"Enforcement Mechanisms","query":"What specific enforcement mechanisms and cross-border cooperation frameworks will Japan implement to curb offshore online casino access and promotion post-enactment?"},{"label":"Impact on Grey Market","query":"How will the explicit ban on online casino promotion and operation affect the existing grey market operators currently serving Japanese consumers, particularly regarding payment processing and advertising channels?"}],"footnotes":""},"categories":[16338,24628,154,158],"tags":[29,4138,233],"class_list":["post-777027259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-asia-news","category-highlight-of-the-week","category-legislation-news","category-slider-home","tag-casino","tag-online-gambling","tag-sports-betting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027259","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=777027259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777027274,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777027259\/revisions\/777027274"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777027107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777027259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777027259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusgn.com\/asia-pacific\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777027259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}