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Clouds are forming over Philippine domestic online gambling as government officials float a new tax and senators lead a charge for restrictions on e-wallets, buy-ins and even a full industry ban.
Anti-gaming activity in the Senate and the House of Representatives is now generating a clutch of bills that could curtail or shut down key planks of the booming domestic industry, particularly the integration of online casino gambling and e-wallets.
Former Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri on Friday (July 4) filed a draft Anti-Online Gambling Act that would prohibit online gambling, likening the domestic industry to the foreign-facing “POGO” segment that was banned from the beginning of the year.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” he said in a statement published on the Senate website. “Gambling addiction looks different now. It no longer looks like a person addicted to the casino or the cock pit.
“It now looks like a kid with a phone under the covers at 2am, losing the family's grocery money on an online casino site.”
Zubiri attacked the frequency of online gambling commercials in e-wallets and the high-profile celebrities who endorse online gambling platforms.
He promised tough fines and eventually jail time for internet service providers, digital platform owners and mobile network companies that do not block gambling websites and remove gambling apps upon a justice department notification.
The bill also targets payment services and any other entity that promotes the industry, including social media influencers.
"The sad thing about this is that children are the ones who are obsessed,” Zubiri said. “It's easy for them to fake their age, create fake accounts and get into these sites.”
Typically for the Philippines, congressional politicians of different stripes have submitted separate bills attacking the industry over time, with the likely outcome being the merging of bills into a document that can gather the most support in both houses of Congress.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, a frequent critic of the gambling industry, has submitted a new bill that would prohibit gambling applications for e-wallets, while limiting website buy-ins to 10,000 pesos ($180), cracking down on advertising at cultural, sporting and other events and billboards near schools or houses of worship, and raising the minimum age for online gambling from 18 to 21.
Gatchalian’s move follows a similar House of Representatives bill from Jonathan Keith Flores, who proposed in late June to block gambling site access to e-wallets and other digital payment platforms, as well as prohibit payment services for online gambling generally.
Progressive House of Representatives political party Akbayan followed this last week with a promise to table a bill that would crack down on advertising, pop-ups and underage access, and sever the nexus between online gambling and e-wallets.
Also on Friday, the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) said it will prosecute influencers over promotions of illegal gambling platforms.
CICC deputy executive director Renato Paraiso told ABS-CBN News that social media and other influencers who endorse illegal operations are “part of a conspiracy to promote illegal gambling” in the eyes of the law.
Gambling regulator PAGCOR, which has embraced the domestic gambling industry, responded coolly on Friday to the Senators’ initiatives and other developments, stating that it would follow all regulations passed by Congress and signed by the President of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the Philippine central bank and the finance ministry have warned of pending measures against the industry.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Thursday said it released a draft circular for stakeholder feedback that would force financial institutions and digital platforms to better protect users from gambling exposure, likely through “various limits to gaming access”.
Finance Secretary Ralph Recto also told the BusinessWorld daily on Friday that his department is aware of growing anxiety over online gambling and is “studying and will propose an online gaming tax”, as well as suggest measures to “deter unimpeded and practically unrestricted access to gambling, particularly digital gambling platforms”.
The flurry of anti-gaming political and bureaucratic activity has hit related online gambling stocks hard, with powerhouse operator DigiPlus Interactive down more than 50 percent on its share price in mid-June.
Shares of integrated resort operator Bloomberry Resorts have also lost one-third of their value over the same period because of its new investment in online gambling.
Increasing momentum against the domestic online gambling space across political, media and administrative spaces bodes ill for the industry, given that the termination of POGO licensing and the repatriation of tens of thousands of migrant labourers have not sated the foes of the industry.
Instead, the strength of the domestic sector has seemingly exposed it to greater scrutiny and generated wider public alarm, with some anti-gambling forces likening the runaway success of much of the industry to the boom-and-ban timeline for e-sabong (online cockfighting).
