The Philippines is in the midst of a transformational era as its gaming regulator PAGCOR looks to address a raft of issues that have long hampered the industry’s effectiveness.
Within the long-conflicted realms of the Philippines’ gaming industry, change is in the air. For years burdened by somewhat questionable oversight and the contradictory role of PAGCOR as both the regulator and an operator of more than 40 land-based casinos, moves are now afoot to address the constraints that have in recent years seen the Philippines hop on and off the international AML “grey list” and lately make global headlines amid last year’s ban on the ill-fated offshore gaming scheme known as POGO.
While previous PAGCOR administrations have flirted with meaningful change, the current one appears to be making good on its promises.
Central to this is the “decoupling” of PAGCOR’s regulatory and operational roles, with the agency deep into the process of preparing its 43 self-owned Casino Filipino branches for sale.
The issue of PAGCOR’s clear conflict of interest as regulator and operator has raised its head many times before. As recently as 2016, the agency’s then-chief, Andrea Domingo, formally launched privatization as a policy priority – only to walk back the idea two years later, citing the profitability of its Casino Filipino properties and legal complexities around their divestiture.
But current PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco, who revived the privatization issue almost immediately upon taking office in late 2022, has made it clear he won’t be changing his mind.
By mid-2024, a comprehensive program of major upgrade works across most Casino Filipino branches was underway – all aimed at increasing their value for sale – including a commitment to replace more than 3,000 older electronic gaming machines with more current releases. A majority, totaling 1,968 new machines, were delivered in late 2024 via a deal with Malaysian gaming supplier RGB.
Speaking with Inside Asian Gaming at ICE Barcelona in January, Tengco said, “It was high time to not only paint, not only refresh, but totally rehabilitate” the agency’s properties.
“So, in 2025, we were able to reopen a few properties with a new look, and there are still so many ongoing renovations and rehabilitations that we’re doing. With the renovations, we have changed our image from a place that was neglected in terms of its look, to today, where I can confidently say we are only one level below the integrated resorts in terms of the look and feel of the casinos.”
On where this leaves the privatization process, Tengco added, “We have submitted all the required documents to the Governance Commission for Government-Owned or Controlled Corporations (GCG), and I’m expecting a decision will be handed down in the next quarter at the latest. If the decision is to allow PAGCOR to decouple, then that will be the start of the process of the decoupling.”
Tengco said there had been “a lot of interest” in the Casino Filipino properties ahead of them officially hitting the market – a process he has previously described as critical to ensuring the Philippines’ gaming industry can become more transparent.
Of course, steps towards greater transparency have already been made. In 2021, the Philippines was placed on the so-called “grey list” of nations under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the global anti-money laundering watchdog. One of the core reasons cited for the country’s inclusion were issues around oversight of, among other institutions, the Philippines’ land-based casinos. VIP rooms and a lack of enforcement of reporting obligations like Suspicious Transaction Reports were highlighted as needing to be addressed.
In late 2023, the Philippines accelerated efforts to exit the list, with the Office of the President issuing a circular directing 44 different government agencies to take all necessary actions to aid the process. PAGCOR was viewed as a key agency, given its supervision of licensed casinos.
In February 2025, the FATF confirmed that the Philippines had been removed from the “grey list” after making “positive progress” in addressing its strategic deficiencies previously identified during mutual evaluations, including improved supervision of AML/CFT controls to mitigate risks associated with casino junkets.
This was all part of a defining period for the Philippines and its gaming industry – coinciding with a Presidential ban on the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) industry that had garnered international headlines.
The POGO ban was, many would agree, an essential move by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr given that an industry aimed at driving revenue via the issue of licenses for online gaming operators to base themselves in the Philippines while offering services overseas was ultimately hijacked by criminal organizations, who used it as a front for everything from crypto scams to human trafficking.
However, an unintended consequence was a huge decline in VIP gaming volumes across the Philippines’ licensed casino-resorts – particularly those in Manila – because cashed-up POGO executives had represented a significant chunk of their premium customer base.
Only two Manila IR operators had published their FY25 financial results at time of writing – Okada Manila and City of Dreams Manila – but they are enough to highlight the broader market decline in the VIP gaming segment. At Okada Manila gross gaming revenues fell by 20.1% year-on-year to Php27.8 billion in 2025, including a 48.1% drop in VIP volumes, while City of Dreams saw GGR decline by 15.1% to US$455 million with VIP volumes down 18.3%.
It is within this context that the rise in the Philippines’ domestic iGaming industry – often referred to as PIGO (Philippine Inland Gaming Operators) but officially known as eGames by PAGCOR – has become so consequential.
Initially introduced as a means for operators with a land-based presence – be they integrated resorts or retail gaming stories – to access their customer base during the COVID-19 pandemic, the sector has surged over the past two years, largely due to favorable regulatory policies that successfully lured grey-market operators into the regulated sphere. The most notable of these policies has been a reduction in the fees charged by PAGCOR on gross gaming revenues to just 25% for IRs and 30% for others, down from over 50% in 2022.
Whether even PAGCOR forecast the full impact of these changes is hard to say, but by mid-2024 revenues from the eGames segment, comprising eCasino, eBingo, sports betting and specialty games, were growing at greater than 500% year-on-year – a seismic shake-up of the Philippines’ entire gaming ecosystem.
PAGCOR noted that eGames had risen to comprise just over 50% of its gaming revenues by the end of 2024 at Php48.79 billion (US$841 million), rising further to 56% or Php53.3 billion (US$918 million) in 2025. It would have been even more but for a series of regulatory restraints imposed mid-year.
For all the efforts of this PAGCOR administration to “tidy up” the Philippines’ substantial gaming sector, the sudden growth of eGames has, ironically, led to the biggest shift of all.
Last August, the Senate Committee on Games and Amusement opened hearings to examine proposed laws around the domestic online gaming sector. These hearings were no mere lip service but a direct response to calls from some government figures to follow the lead of POGO and ban the industry altogether.
While cooler heads ultimately prevailed, the headlines this issue generated were enough to prompt acknowledgement from PAGCOR that the rapid expansion of the sector had outpaced existing regulations and that a more comprehensive regulatory framework was needed. It also imposed a series of relatively simple measures in the meantime, including a ban on all out-of-home advertising (such as billboards) by online gambling operators, restrictions around gambling-related ads on primetime television and a requirement that all such ads be approved by the Ad Standards Council before airing.
A more controversial change was ordered by the Philippines’ central bank in August requiring e-wallet providers to remove all direct links to online gaming platforms within 48 hours. Critics of this order, which include PAGCOR itself, argue that the e-wallet providers affected had only ever linked to PAGCOR-accredited sites and that by removing these links it had become infinitely more difficult for players to identify which sites are legal and which are not.
Evan Spytma, CEO of leading eGames operator Casino Plus, further argued during a panel session at the IAG EXPO in Manila in September that the sector’s rapid growth in recent years was entirely due to previously-illegal operators becoming licensed and warned that the delinking from e-wallets would drive licensed operators back to the illegal market by removing the incentives that encouraged them to become licensed in the first place.
Despite this, PAGCOR has wasted no time in moving to establish a formal framework around the eGames sector, including the plugging of holes that have plagued the broader gaming industry for years.
In December, the regulator announced it would require licensed online operators to pay a monthly Minimum Guaranteed Fee (MGF) aimed at preventing the under-declaration or misdeclaration of revenues while consolidating the industry by targeting operators seen to be holding onto a license for future sale.
Under the terms of the MGF policy, licensed operators serving the Philippines’ domestic market and who offer electronic casino games will from 1 April 2026 be pegged to a benchmark of Php30 million (US$510,000) in monthly GGR and must pay a monthly MGF of Php9 million (US$153,000). Those who do not offer e-casino games, such as sportsbooks, will be pegged to a benchmark of Php15 million (US$255,000) in monthly GGR and must pay Php3 million (US$51,000).
Those benchmarks will from 1 October 2026 rise to Php35 million (US$595,100) in GGR and Php10.5 million (US$178,500) in fees for those offering electronic casino games, or Php20 million (US$340,070) in GGR and Php4 million (US$68,000) in fees for those that don’t.
The rates represent an effective tax rate of 30% on e-casino operators and 20% for others at the minimum rate.
In a research paper released days after the new policy was announced, law firm Arden Consult explained, “The Minimum Guaranteed Fee does not appear to be a sudden revenue grab. It seems to be a deliberate and, in many ways, overdue market correction – approved by the PAGCOR Board with a clear logic.
“By setting a minimum floor and assessing [operators] on the higher of the MGF or the percentage-based PAGCOR share, PAGCOR closes the space for operators to remain licensed while consistently reporting negligible revenue. Put simply: the MGF makes chronic underreporting economically irrational.”
Even more transformational is a move by PAGCOR to not only license eGames operators but also the companies that supply them.
The regulator first announced its intention to bring all B2B gaming service providers under a formal accreditation scheme last April, although full details weren’t unveiled until October. Another memo issued in January locked in accreditation deadlines and made clear that no exceptions would be granted.
The new regulations require all B2B suppliers of online gaming services in the Philippines to be fully accredited by no later than 31 March 2026, after which time they will be deemed unauthorized.
All operators and aggregators were also required to provide PAGCOR by 12 February 2026 with a list of all of their B2B suppliers and providers, to allow the regulator to cross-check whether these providers are already accredited under the new framework.
According to Arden, the message from PAGCOR is clear: any suppliers taking a “wait-and-see” approach in the hope that implementation might be delayed or enforcement applied unevenly are in for a rude shock come 1 April 2026 – the date the new regulations for B2B suppliers officially come into force.
“Any lingering doubts about enforcement … should now be firmly dispelled,” she said in a February paper.
“The January 2026 memorandum removes ambiguity: PAGCOR is enforcing the framework through operators and licensed entities themselves. By requiring operators to submit comprehensive lists of their B2B providers and signaling the use of cease-and-desist orders against unaccredited suppliers, the regulator has made clear that reliance on operator discretion or regulatory inertia is no longer viable.
“Continued use of non-compliant vendors now directly exposes operators to regulatory risk.”
The first supplier to achieve formal accreditation under PAGCOR’s new regulatory framework was Light & Wonder, an achievement celebrated at a special symposium it hosted for customers during IAG EXPO in early September.
Almost six months on, Light & Wonder’s VP New Markets & Sales, iGaming, Magdalena Podhorska-Okolow, described the framework as a positive step and a necessary evolution for a new or emerging iGaming landscape.
“It formalizes the standards and expectations that any credible, responsible supplier should already be meeting, especially around compliance, integrity and operating exclusively within regulated environments,” she explained.
“By establishing clear requirements, the framework helps differentiate reputable suppliers from those active in unregulated spaces, creating a level playing field and helping to clean up the market. Importantly, it signals PAGCOR’s intent to drive long‑term, meaningful contributions from iGaming to society by fostering a transparent and well‑governed ecosystem.
More broadly speaking, Podhorska-Okolow said the framework opens the door for suppliers who only operate in regulated markets to enter the burgeoning Asian iGaming sector in a meaningful way
“The presence of large, publicly traded companies now viewing the market as lower‑risk is a strong endorsement of PAGCOR’s direction. It also highlights PAGCOR’s ambition to take the lead in Asia, with the Philippines emerging as the first to establish a modern, regulated iGaming environment.”
Podhorska-Okolow described the Philippines as the “gateway to regulated iGaming in Asia”, adding that by moving early, Light & Wonder “aims to champion responsible, well‑regulated online gaming across the region and encourage other jurisdictions such as Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia to follow PAGCOR’s lead.
“Being early adopters aligns with our broader ambition to help shape the future of regulated iGaming in Asia,” she said.
DigiPlus Interactive Corp, the dominant presence in the Philippines eGames scene with both B2B and B2C operations, also confirmed to Inside Asian Gaming that it has been fully accredited by PAGCOR and said it too supported the regulator’s initiative.
“PAGCOR’s tighter B2B accreditation rules refine the supply chain and enforce clear compliance standards, ultimately strengthening the industry’s foundation,” said Jasper Vicencio, President of DigiPlus subsidiaries AB Leisure Exponent, Inc – operator of BingoPlus – and Gamemaster Integrated, Inc.
“Online gaming relies on platforms, content providers, streaming services and payment channels. If one link is unregulated, the entire system – in this case, the industry – is exposed. Clear accreditation rules, firm enforcement and local presence requirements protect players, uphold accountability and reinforce the credibility of licensed operators which are essential for responsible and sustainable growth.
“A regulated and transparent ecosystem builds long-term confidence. We remain optimistic that compliant operators will see sustainable growth this year and beyond.”
Vicencio added that the new regulatory system for suppliers would in fact make it easier to launch new games into the market, because “we do not have to apply for a separate approval for each and every game as long as the B2B provider already got a previous approval from PAGCOR on the same game.”
In its most recent research paper, Arden Consult stated that listed companies had typically been among the first to apply for PAGCOR accreditation under its new framework, noting, “These compliance-forward companies treated PAGCOR accreditation as a competitive and regulatory advantage, positioning themselves as approved partners in the Philippine market.”
More importantly, however, they see the framework as the dawn of a new era for the Philippines’ gaming industry as a whole – providing not just credibility but a welcome unification of stakeholders that can set them on a positive path forward well into the future.
“We believe the industry is now entering a period of stabilization,” observed Light & Wonder’s Podhorska-Okolow. “After years of rapid expansion and subsequent challenges, our hope is that March 31 marks a ‘reset point’ where the market is effectively reborn under a unified, transparent regulatory framework.
“From this point forward, we expect operators and suppliers to be aligned, compliant and operating on equal terms, conditions necessary for sustainable, long‑term growth. Over time, this should support the development of a healthy regulated market, reduce the influence of unlicensed operators and improve channelization.
“Ultimately, we see this as a positive opportunity for steady, responsible growth that benefits all stakeholders: regulators, suppliers, operators and players.”
