Could World Expo 2025 delay MGM Osaka 2030 opening target?

The countdown is on to the World Expo, coming next year to Osaka, Japan. The global exhibition will start 13 April 2025, on Yumeshima Island, a 2.8 million-square metre pentagonal tract on Osaka Bay. It will continue for six months, until 13 October.

The ¥235 billion (£1.267bn/€1.472bn/$1.6bn) World Expo project has been touted as a way to redevelop the onetime waste disposal site. Officials see the Yumeshima of the future as a destination, with hotels, conference centres, residential neighbourhoods – and a casino resort.

And that, as they say, is the rub.

As construction begins on the expo, MGM Resorts International is nearby, preparing to build a ¥1.473tn integrated resort (IR).

According to local media reports, expo organisers want to pause construction of the IR for the duration of the six-month event. That could delay the planned fall 2030 opening of MGM Osaka, which has already faced numerous setbacks.

IR plans first interrupted by Covid

In 2018, Osaka Prefecture won the right to host the 2025 expo. Around the same time, MGM was gearing up to bid on one of Japan’s first IR licences. The US-based operator had an ambitious plan: to open MGM Osaka before the expo, to serve its millions of attendees.

Then came Covid-19, and everything ground to a halt. The pandemic unraveled MGM’s optimistic timeline. It also dampened interest in the Japanese market, which analysts had called “the next holy grail of gaming”.

Japan’s central government did not award its single IR licence – to MGM – until September 2021. At that point, the resort’s grand opening was set for 2029. But last year, the opening was pushed back to 2030.

“Critical time” for MGM Osaka development

In a 2023 interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle discussed the man-made island, primarily used as a container port.

“Interestingly, it was originally built to compete for the 1972 Olympics,” he said. “And it’s been sitting there since. It’s got a couple things on it. It’s going to house the World Expo in 2025… and then we’ll follow up and be the extension and the continuation of that with MGM.”

MGM is now involved in site prep and must begin active construction in 2025 to open in 2030. “We are slated for mid-summer next year to begin that process,” Hornbuckle said on a March earnings call. “That will go on for about three years, by the way, while we do construction.

“And once we get under way there, I think a path to 2030 is pretty clear and pretty straightforward. So I think between now and next summer is really a critical path and critical time.”

However, building two megaprojects at the same time is perceived by some as untenable. Expo organisers reportedly fear it will tax the overburdened construction industry and further drive up costs.

Osaka’s governor, Hirofumi Yoshimura, and mayor, Hideyuki Yokoyama, reportedly will soon meet with MGM officials to discuss the matter.