Japan has admitted that its long-delayed casinos won’t likely open until the latter half of the decade, and that’s if nothing else goes wrong. 

On Wednesday, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) agreed on a revised draft of the country’s basic policy on developing integrated resorts (IR). The formal policy is expected to be finalized by the end of December. 

The government now says it will start accepting prefectural governments’ proposed development plans starting October 1, 2021, with the deadline for submission extending to April 28, 2022. That’s around nine months later than the government’s most recent schedule. 

And that isn’t the only extended timeline the LDP was forced to acknowledge, as it now says the launch target for the three possible casinos has been pushed back from the ‘mid-2020’s to the ‘late-2020s.’ Hard to believe that at one point the government expressed hope that casinos would open in time for Tokyo’s hosting of the 2020 Olympic Games.