ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Keita Ishii, President & COO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has reached an agreement on a capital and business tie-up with NEON Group Limited (based in Singapore; Ron Tan, CEO; hereinafter “NEON”), a company that operates an immersive exhibition business around the world with its various contents.

The experience-based entertainment market (e.g., movies, museums, sports watching) is seeing significant growth around the world after COVID-19 and was estimated to represent a market of around 74 trillion yen as of 2023. The market for immersive exhibitions, one of the emerging segments in this area, is believed to be equivalent to nearly 2 trillion yen and the estimated rate of its average annual growth to 2028 is 20％. The market is expected to grow at a significant speed*¹.

NEON has a number of exhibition licenses on a range of content, from major films such as Jurassic World, the Harry Potter series and Avatar produced by companies like Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Company to Ramesses II, Machu Picchu and other national treasure-level cultural heritages. NEON has made and operated immersive exhibitions using its strength in the most advanced robotics technologies. Immersive exhibitions have taken place in more than 80 cities around the world and drawn a total of 16 million visitors.

With the development of Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo^*2 (agreement concluded in 2020; opened in 2023), ITOCHU embarked on the exhibition business starting from construction & realty.
As we sought to promote the business further, we started considering a capital and business tie-up with NEON last year. Prior to the formation of a tie-up between ITOCHU and NEON, ITOCHU Property Development, Ltd. (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Norio Matsu, President), a wholly owned subsidiary of ITOCHU, became involved in the operations of NEON’s Japanese subsidiary in the spring of 2024^*3. Ramses the Great and the Gold of the Pharaohs will be released for the first time in Japan in the spring of 2025, produced and operated by NEON’s Japanese subsidiary, at CREVIA BASE TOKYO (Koto-ku, Tokyo)^*4.

Consideration of a capital and business tie-up between ITOCHU and NEON was accelerated through the efforts by our subsidiary and NEON’s Japanese subsidiary. This led to our recent decision to invest in NEON. With this capital and business tie-up, we will leverage the ITOCHU Group’s comprehensive capabilities to develop exhibition facilities around the world for NEON, disseminate Japanese content globally, and sell high-quality goods. Together with NEON, we will expand the exhibition business and related businesses around the world.
ITOCHU has set its management policy with this theme: The Brand-new Deal - opportunities are shifting downstream –. We will continue developing and evolving businesses starting from the downstream which is close to consumers.