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Casino Plus, an emerging domestic online gambling heavyweight in the Philippines, is blocking access for Chinese nationals on Philippine soil after receiving requests from its integrated resort (IR) partners.
Evan Spytma, the CEO of both Casino Plus and its host casino, the Hotel Stotsenberg in Clark Freeport, said last week that new online blocks on visiting Chinese customers point to operators decoupling with the Chinese market.
The growth of domestic e-gaming in the Philippines is turning industry heads, after electronic games quarterly revenue logged 4.9bn pesos ($88m), 6.3bn pesos, 18.4bn pesos, 22.5bn pesos and 30.9bn ($553m) pesos over successive quarters ending June 2024, according to data from gambling regulator PAGCOR.
This amounts to a 525 percent increase in quarterly revenue year-on-year, an aggressive expansion that PAGCOR chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco has attributed to technological advances, affordability of personal devices and tech-driven evolution of consumer behaviour.
PAGCOR is trying to further fuel e-games growth, with Tengco announcing on September 10 that licence fees will fall another 5 percentage points and 10 percentage points for land-based e-games and IR online gambling, respectively.
But the contribution of online casino and sports betting to this growth may be moderated to some extent by recent blocks on visiting Chinese tourists who attempt to access IR-linked online products.
“One of the requests we’re getting right now [from IR clients] is basically to block any Chinese here in the Philippines from actually logging in and seeing that IR’s product,” Spytma told the IAG Academy Summit in Manila on September 11.
“So I think there is definitely a movement away from the Chinese tourist, and we support them in whatever they want to do, so we just [modify] that on our system.”
However, it was not immediately clear how IRs identify users as Chinese citizens while on Philippine soil, how the blocks might be evaded or how such identification and blocking may affect regulatory oversight.
Daniel Cecilio, senior vice president of PAGCOR’s licensing and regulatory group for land-based operations, told Vixio GamblingCompliance on the sidelines of the IAG Academy Summit that the regulator is aware of the blocking process for Chinese citizens, but could not elaborate.
“I have been hearing this, of course. There have been talks, discussions, with PAGCOR,” he said.
Chinese names in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) follow a standard Pinyin Romanisation system that distinguishes them from people in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, which use different Romanisation systems, as well as much of the Chinese diaspora.
However, IR or Casino Plus employee knowledge of such systems, even if thorough, could only strongly hint at a customer’s PRC nationality; passport details would remain essential for verification.
The online blocks reflect increasing caution on the part of Philippine land-based gambling companies in distancing themselves from Chinese nationals, who potentially break Chinese law by gambling overseas.
Beijing has for years threatened the Philippine government, its agencies and gambling companies for allowing Chinese citizens to gamble at land-based or online facilities, whether they are in the Philippines or not.
Beijing has also threatened Chinese gamblers and migrant gambling company employees alike with prosecution over any connection with the industry upon returning home.
With its partners, Casino Plus has in only a few years claimed an overwhelming 86 percent market share of the live IR online table game business in the Philippines, and a greater than 50 percent share of live IR online slots, Spytma told the summit audience.
This is in part because Philippine IRs unfamiliar with the online space and backend machinations have turned to Casino Plus for installation and management, he said.
“One of the problems we’ve seen is land-based casinos don’t often know how to really go online, and they also don’t have that online presence in terms of players.
“We open up our millions and millions of players to land-based casinos, provide them with the technology to go online, access those players, and we actually put physical machines, physical table games in their properties, stream them online, manage them, and give them full access to our players. So it’s a turn-key solution.”
As for Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s pending ban on local foreign-facing online gambling operators (POGOs), Spytma said it has had and will have no impact on his local business.
“There’s no effect on us. We’re completely targeting the Philippines, so we IP-block everyone outside, don’t really take foreign players, so there has been no effect whatsoever.”
