Licensees limited to 50 operators
The chairwoman of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., that country’s state-run gaming regulator, says revenues from the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations or POGO could nearly double this year from P3.4 billion (US$64.8 million) to P6 billion (US$114.5 million).
“I’m really confident that this industry is going to take off. For me this is a very good situation, we really want to get support from PAGCOR,” Brian Ang, president of Manila-based online casino Oriental Game, told the Philippine Star. “We expect the Philippines’ offshore gambling sector to register a strong growth this year, as operators are expanding on the back of increasing popularity of iGaming.”
Ang said the government’s multibillion-dollar revenue target for POGO is within reach. Domingo emphasized that offshore gaming is strictly regulated and unavailable by local residents.
“Only foreigners outside the Philippines can play our licensed e-Casinos. We have no plans to open it to local players,” she said. There are now 55 POGO licensed operations in the country; 45 of those are online casinos and 10 are sports betting outlets, the Star reported.
“We’re projecting P6 billion because we have this new audit provider,” Domingo noted. “They’re now installing the application, which integrates the systems of online casinos and PAGCOR. We can now see real-time bets.”
The chairwoman added PAGCOR will limit offshore gaming operations to 50 licensed providers for now. “We’re very strict to the quality, we won’t allow fly-by-night operators that once they get hit, they don’t pay and transfer, put another name. That happened before—a lot of it. That will not happen this time,” Domingo said.
PAGCOR Assistant Vice President Jose Trias agreed that the regulatory body is “going slow” on the offshore industry. “We want the audit system ready in place to monitor them. So everything should be put in place first, then we open up.”
At the same time, PAGCOR has been accused of showing “shameless disrespect to the Supreme Court,” which ruled that the gaming regulator has no legal authority over online gaming.
The Manila Standard reports that the anti-corruption watchdog group known as the Anti-Trapo Movement Inc. says PAGCOR and Domingo have deliberately ignored the “2004 landmark decision” in the case of Senator Robert Jaworski v. PAGCOR.
In that decision, Jaworski, chairman of the Senate Committee on Games, Amusement and Sports, said PAGCOR was not authorized to operate gambling on the internet because the internet did not exist when the body was chartered in 1983.
Anti-Trapo founding chairman Leon Peralta said, “for reasons known only to herself and probably her cohorts, the Domingo-led PAGCOR made their own interpretation of the PAGCOR charter and arrogated upon themselves the powers to administer online gaming in the country in blatant violation of Presidential Decree 1869 and other pertinent laws, particularly Republic Act 9487.”
Peralta said that under the law, only the Cagayan Economic Zone and Freeport Authority and the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority have legal jurisdiction over online gaming activities in the Philippines.
