PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco said Monday he wants the Philippines gaming regulator to complete privatization of its 41 self-run casinos by 2028. He also revealed that delivery of more than 3,000 new slot machines as part of efforts to revitalize those casinos will begin from January next year. Tengco said they are expected to generate US$316 million in additional revenue for PAGCOR by the time privatization is complete.
Tengco was speaking at G2E in Las Vegas overnight (Asia time) on an “International Regulators Talk” panel moderated by John Hagan, Managing Partner for specialist gambling law firm Harris Hagan. Other panelists included Caroline Kongwa, Chief Strategic Adviser for the National Gambling Board of South Africa, and Tim Miller, Executive Director of the UK Gambling Commission.
PAGCOR’s plans to privatize its Casino Filipino brand follows ongoing criticism of the agency’s dual role as a regulator and an operator. Tengo said his goal was to “achieve the completion of privatization by the end of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s term in 2028.”
To help achieve this, he said delivery of more than 3,000 new machines, aimed at enhancing the value of its properties, will start early in January 2024.
“Our ongoing modernization will also help increase the value of our properties before we start selling them in late 2025, which will then be the signal of officially starting our privatization,” he said.
“Privatization will take some time, which is why we must optimize our casino operations in the meantime to attract more players and to continue generating revenues for PAGCOR’s nation-building programs.
“We have already reached an agreement with our suppliers for a revenue-sharing scheme for these new machines for which PAGCOR will generate the lion’s share, so to speak.
“These new machines are expected to generate at least Php18 billion (US$316 million) in additional revenue for PAGCOR in the next five years.”
As well as installing new machines, PACOR will “also modernize all their table games” and acquire a “new and more sophisticated table games management system to inject more life in our casinos,” Tengco explained.
Likewise, the regulator is “currently procuring a system for our online platform which we will call casinofilipino.com.”
As reported by Inside Asian Gaming, PAGCOR has announced plans to launch its own online casino as another means to enhance the value of its assets before privatization. The online casino will be put up for sale as part of the privatization process.
However, in the meantime it will allow PAGCOR to tap into the “very lucrative and very profitable online market,” Tengco said.
“In the end all of these efforts will enhance the value of PAGCOR’s properties so that we can sell them at a better price and make use of the proceeds from the sale to help our contributions to nation-building and to be able to shift to a purely regulatory corporation.
“Once we become a pure regulator and we have established a level playing field which is more predictable and more in line with global best practices, we expect to see an influx of new investments in the Philippine gaming industry.
“The ultimate goal for us is to make the Philippines the gold standard, the epicentre of gaming in the Asia-Pacific region.”
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