About this app
What is Treasure Island?
Japan’s gambling landscape has remained an enigma. It began as a seismic opportunity sought after by international casino giants following the enactment of its Integrated Resort Implementation Law in 2018, but as progress slowed potential bidders withdrew, and MGM Osaka emerged as the only new kid on the IR block, with a launch date of 2030.
Now, with Japan promising to open two more IR licences in 2027, ambitious bidders are craning their necks for a leg up over the competition. But Japan has telegraphed mixed messaging on the casino industry.
Depsite it having liberalised gambling in pursuit of the economic benefits that casinos can bring, its regulatory architecture and deeply ingrained social attitudes are not particuarly pro gambling.
About Treasure Island
If free-to-play builds familiarity, Splash Tech’s jackpot engine is intended to provide a common thread across an operator’s offering, even when the games themselves come from dozens of competing studios.
“A jackpot engine is a rare product in that you can brand that engine and it will sit across all of your content,” Wilson says. “As an operator, you might have 50 different game suppliers. On every single game that you’re serving, you can show a branded jackpot.”
That is the gap Splash Tech solves: many operators already have strong game libraries, and some have proprietary content, but they lack a flexible jackpot layer that can sit across the full offering without requiring them to build and operate their own engine.
What is Treasure Island?
“Interviews [ … ] with representatives of state monopoly operators across European jurisdictions consistently suggested that advertising restrictions did not lead to consumer migration towards illegal operators,” the report said.
This report arrived amid the UK government’s 2023 white paper on gambling reform, which introduced a statutory levy for funding research and treatment.
A cross-party of MPs similarly branded gambling advertisement as a “public health issue” in a recent parliamentary debate. The comment came after the publication of the All-Party Parliamentary Group’s May report.
