MGM Osaka to Begin Construction on Main Resort Structure in April 2025

Posted on: December 26, 2024, 11:38h. 

Last updated on: December 26, 2024, 11:50h.

Devin O'Connor @CasinoorgDevinO Read More
Expertise: Asia Pacific Gaming, Commercial Gaming, Legislation, Politics.

MGM Osaka, the first and only integrated resort (IR) casino planned for Japan, will break ground on the expansive complex’s primary structure in April 2025.

MGM Osaka Japan Yumeshima Island
A rendering of MGM Osaka on Japan’s Yumeshima Island. MGM Resorts and Orix Corporation plan to break ground on the primary hotel and resort structure in April 2025. (Image: Osaka IR Corporation)

MGM Osaka is a JPY1.27 trillion (US$8 billion) project led by MGM Resorts International and Japanese financial conglomerate Orix Corporation. The companies are working collaboratively in Japan as Osaka IR Corporation.

Site prep work on the artificial Yumeshima Island began in late 2023. The Kensetsu Tsushin Shimbun, a Japanese business news outlet, reports that construction on the permanent resort will begin in earnest in April 2025.

Over the next several months, laborers are expected to have the roughly 52-acre site ready for heavy construction. Because Yumeshima is a manmade island spanning almost 1,000 acres, the developers first needed to strengthen the land by installing steel beams that extend more than 200 feet to reach bedrock.

MGM Osaka

MGM and Orix are equal 42.5% equity partners in MGM Osaka. The remaining 15% ownership position is shared among a host of Japanese-based companies, including Panasonic, Kansai Electric, and West Japan Railway.

MGM Osaka will include almost nine million square feet of indoor floor space, including the casino, hotel rooms, restaurants, convention center, theater, retail shopping, and many other resort amenities. Japan’s 2018 casino law limits the gaming floor to 3% of the resort’s overall indoor floor space.

MGM Osaka is to include 2,500 hotel rooms, a shopping mall, a 3,500-seat theater, a spa and fitness center, a convention center, and a facility promoting tourism throughout Japan. Details regarding the casino haven’t yet been disclosed, but the facility will likely have more than 200 table games and 2,000 slot machines.

Our vision is to bring MGM’s ‘wow’ DNA from Las Vegas to Osaka and build a resort that will be a source of great pride in the community,” said MGM President and CEO Bill Hornbuckle.

MGM Osaka is targeting a 2030 completion date.

Yumeshima Finds Investment

Yumeshima is one of three artificial islands the Osaka government constructed in the 1980s. The goal was to expand the city and use the islands for special events.

The venture has largely been a bust, as Osaka’s bid for the 2008 Summer Olympics, which included a proposal to host the Olympic Village on Yumeshima, lost to Beijing. Commercial development on Yumeshima has also been nonexistent.

Yumeshima has predominantly served as a home for shipping containers and a logistics center. But as Japan’s National Diet mulled allowing casinos to come to the country under then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2017, the Osaka government quickly motioned that it would be interested in allowing an IR on Yumeshima.

MGM and Osaka struck a partnership to bring a Las Vegas resort to Yumeshima. The goal was to have the property up and running in time for Osaka’s hosting of the 2025 World Expo, but the project was continually delayed by Japanese lawmakers dragging their feet in finalizing regulations.

MGM and Orix were only officially issued a license for MGM Osaka in April 2023, nearly a half-decade after the Diet passed the 2018 gaming statute that authorized up to three casino resorts. MGM Osaka is the only casino bid to be awarded a gaming license.