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Donald Trump is trying to help major campaign donor Sheldon Adelson get a casino license in Japan. That’s a key assertion in investigative journalism group ProPublica’s report on the relationship between the U.S. President and Las Vegas Sands founder with a fortune in excess of US$30 billion. Trump’s backing may fuel Adelson’s claim that LVS has the “pole position” in Japan. It’s unclear, though, what influence Trump could wield in Japan’s unfolding integrated resort competition, and whether Adelson and LVS fit Japan’s ideal IR operator profile.

Japan is the world’s last great untapped casino market, the “holy grail” for Adelson. (Macau is a part of but apart from China; a casino within mainland China remains the impossible dream.) Virtually every casino company on earth covets one of Japan’s three licenses to build an integrated resort that combines a casino, hotel, convention facilities and other amenities, expected to cost up to US$10 billion. The convention space requirement is a surprise. It plays to a LVS strength as the casino industry’s MICE (meetings, incentives, conventions, exhibitions) pioneer, though MGM Resorts International, another Japan contender, says it runs more convention space than LVS.

The ProPublica article, co-published with public radio station WNYC and written by Justin Elliott (full disclosure: Elliott and I correspond professionally), highlights benefits Adelson reaps from giving, with wife Miriam, US$20 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign, US$5 million for his inauguration and $112 million to the 2018 midterm election campaign. Adelson’s “unprecedented” access and influence with the Trump administration, according to the article, get Adelson White House meetings and private phone calls. It yielded a seat at a February 2017 breakfast with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, among a handful of top executives including two casino counterparts, where Adelson directly engaged Abe about IRs. Trump reportedly breached protocol and precedent to raise the casino issue with Abe, specifically naming LVS and at least one other American casino operator.

Abe has denied that Trump intervened on behalf any U.S. casino company, but the real question is: would it matter if he had? “No way,” says government adviser on IRs Toru Mihara. “The party who makes the decision on selection of the [IR] investor/operator is the local government, and the central government can never exercise any influence over that decision.”

Mihara, a professor at Osaka University of Commerce, adds, “Potential political pressure is just an illusion distorted by some media. There won’t be any influences on decision makers in Japan, be they local or central governments.”

Winning a license may hinge less who you know than how well you play with others. In addition to local government, a Japan IR will entail partnering with other, mainly Japanese companies. In Macau, the government brokered partnership between LVS and Galaxy Entertainment quickly splintered, creating a crisis eventually solved by splitting the concession in two, turning Macau’s casino liberalization on its head. A former partner and a consultant have each sued LVS in connection with the Macau bid.

Adelson’s penchant for speaking out – he publicly accused Macau Chief Executive Chui Sai-on of reneging on a deal to sell Cotai Strip apartments and criticized Japan’s (ultimately relaxed) casino size limits – may also give pause in a society that values cooperation and consensus.

Amusement Japan Editor in Chief Tsuyoshi Tanaka acknowledges Adelson brings baggage. “However Mr Adelson is a great businessman, with success in the IR business and a Nevada gaming license,” the casino industry gold standard for probity. “These are very important matters for local officials, who want to avoid a possible IR failure.”

The biggest challenge for LVS and Adelson in Japan may prove its desire to control the IR. “Some of the Americans have not learned the lesson of Japan Inc from recent decades: they will never allow a foreign company to waltz in and set up a brand new sunrise industry that is not majority controlled by Japanese,” iGamiX Management & Consulting Managing Director Ben Lee says.

“I have long predicted that the model we will eventually see in Japan will be much smaller than that envisaged by most, but with unique Japanese cultural characteristics, mid sized, with a dominant focus on non-gaming, just like the Singapore IR model, which they have long admired. Japanese dominated consortiums will own and develop these IRs, and the foreigners will be permitted minority stakes for their management expertise in the initial start up.”

Abe visited one of those much admired Singapore IRs, Marina Bay Sands, headed by George Tanasijevich, who doubles as LVS global development director, leading its Japan license efforts. LVS may indeed be the front runner in a race that, by its own definition, it can’t win.