Topic summary
Pachinko parlor
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Pachinko.
By 1994, the pachinko market in Japan was valued at ¥30 trillion (nearly US$300 billion; equivalent to $570 billion in 2024). In 1999, sales and revenue from pachinko parlors contributed 5.6% of Japan's ¥500 trillion GDP, and they employed over 330,000 people, 0.52% of all those employed in Japan. However, the sales amount of these pachinko parlors is calculated based on the total amount that customers rented pachinko balls from pachinko parlors. It is said that on average, about 85% of the money spent by customers in pachinko parlors is returned to the customers, so the sales of pachinko parlors are said to be about 15% of the statistical amount. In 2015, Japan's pachinko market generated more gambling revenue than that of Macau, Las Vegas, and Singapore combined. Pachinko gambling's grey-market nature and tremendous profit historically resulted in considerable infiltration by yakuza, who used it as a vehicle for money laundering and racketeering.