Reuters – The western Japanese city of Osaka could have a casino resort up and running by 2019, in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, if a bill to legalize casinos is approved by parliament this year, executives of MGM Resorts International (MGM.N) said on Saturday. “If the first bill passes in the fall of this year, you could have something up and ready to go in Osaka by the end of 2019,” Ed Bowers, MGM’s senior vice president for global gaming development, said in an interview for the Reuters Japan Summit. Lawmakers have said they would like to see…

Vegas Seven – Jim Murren is playing the long game on the Strip. “We have a very strong feeling of what Las Vegas is going to look like five to 10 years from now,” the MGM Resorts International chairman said recently when describing the details of the Park, an entertainment and retail complex between the company’s New York-New York and Monte Carlo properties. “It’s very different from today—and when this is done in 2016 we’ll see if we’re right.” The Park is a bet on both the great outdoors (the kind of urban walking experience we’ve seen at Caesars’ Linq)…

MGM Resorts International CFO Dan D’Arrigo said the company was still deciding whether or not to launch online poker in Nevada and the state may be too small to provide a lucrative online market on a standalone basis. “We have to make an assessment on the cost to operate that space. We haven’t ruled it out, but we haven’t given it a green light either,” said D’Arrigo in an interview on Thursday. “We’re not going to be the first or a pioneer from the state’s perspective.” Nevada, which legalized online poker in Nevada back in February, became the first state…