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How to play Wild Jester
Although the late LVS chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson hailed the Japanese market as “a holy grail” and the “ultimate of business opportunities”, the company dropped out of the game, scrapping its pledged $10 billion project.
Japan has drawn on Singapore’s IR development model, which embodies a balancing act between ambitious economic visions and restrictive conditions. But Andrew Klebanow, principal of Klebanow Consulting, believes Japan’s IR regulations swerved “too far into crafting regulations and policies”. Klebanow specialises in hotel-casino market feasibility studies, strategic planning and facility planning recommendations.
“As the RFP process played out, regulators introduced additional policies and regulations. As each regulation was introduced, developers adjusted their gaming forecasting models downward. Finally, those models reached a tipping point where potential revenues were insufficient to justify a project’s capital costs,” says Klebanow.
How to play Wild Jester
As well as a statewide exclusion register, the package also set out to reduce the number of poker machines from the current figure of 87,000 across 2,100 clubs and hotels.
The government said it aims to achieve this by increasing the forfeiture rate when gaming machine entitlements are traded from one in three to one in two.
The NSW government initiated its first formal review of ClubGRANTS in over a decade after taking office in 2023. Although the final report was submitted in January 2025, it has yet to be released publicly.
What is Wild Jester?
For Splash Tech, optimisation means protecting a safe and enjoyable experience while giving operators the opportunity to increase gross gaming revenue. “Getting that balance right is why we exist, really,” Wilson says.
These are not capabilities that Splash Tech intends to begin developing now the acquisition has completed. Its products are already live with recognised operators including ComeOn, while a number of its free-to-play relationships are entering their fifth year.
Commercial confidentiality prevents Wilson from attaching individual numbers to those partnerships, but he is unequivocal about the jackpot engine’s record. “Every operator or brand that’s launched our jackpot engine has seen an immediate lift in GGR,” he says.
