6.3% Fewer Pachinko Halls at End of 2020

Akihabara News (Tokyo) — According to the statistics published this week by the National Police Agency, the total number of pachinko parlors around Japan declined by 6.3% over the course of the year 2020.

The total number of halls remaining at the end of December was 9,035, a figure that fell 604 from the previous year. It’s reasonable to assume that the number of pachinko halls today has fallen under 9,000.

At the industry’s peak in the mid-1990s, there were more than 18,000 pachinko parlors in Japan, so the past quarter century has witnessed the industry fall by over half its size.

Japan’s shrinking population and shift toward online forms of entertainment are key reasons for the longterm decline, but the industry was also battered by tighter regulation and the Covid pandemic in 2020.

About 90% of today’s pachinko parlors offer both pachinko and pachislot machines, while the remainder are pachislot specialty stores.

Police figures show that there are about 2.4 million pachinko machines in operation across the nation and over 1.5 million pachislot machines.

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