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Primary Philippine gambling regulator PAGCOR has expanded its powers to cover support services for domestic online gambling operators, including game providers and aggregators, payments and marketing services, and testing labs.
In a memorandum on Wednesday (April 30), PAGCOR’s assistant vice president for e-gaming licensing, Jeremy Luglug, announced the implementation of a 26-page framework for regulating and accrediting “gaming affiliates and support service providers”, effective April 24.
The new framework declares that B2B services without PAGCOR accreditation are illegal and that B2C online gambling operators can only do business with PAGCOR-approved affiliates and service providers.
The framework allows PAGCOR to push back against gambling industry opponents and sceptics in Congress and the wider community who, in some cases, are turning their attention to domestic gambling aberrations after the banning of foreign-facing online gambling operators (POGOs) last year.
After years of failing to bring criminally linked POGOs and ex-POGO operators to heel, PAGCOR can now take firmer hold of a domestic online industry that leapt into the top ten global markets by revenue in just a few years, according to Vixio GamblingCompliance estimates.
That performance continued in the first quarter of 2025, with officials on Wednesday reporting an 11.2 percent jump in year-on-year PAGCOR revenue to 28.07bn pesos ($506m), of which 56 percent derived from electronic games and e-bingo, a broad category that includes online casino and sports betting.
PAGCOR has yet to release first-quarter gross gambling revenue metrics for the wider gambling industry.
The memorandum noted that the newly regulated B2B categories of gaming affiliates and support service providers will be subject to additional transition and implementation guidelines at a later date.
The affiliates category is broken down into game aggregators and game content providers, while “support service providers” refers to payments operators and channels, marketing and promotions, customer service, know-your-customer and membership systems, and independent game testing laboratories.
All corporate licensees and their “key officials” will be subject to probity checks and must pay a 250,000 peso annual fee, except for content providers, who will pay that sum annually for each game in use, and for testing labs, which will pay 500,000 pesos per year.
Game content providers must also submit a “performance cash deposit” of 10m pesos for one game offered, or 20m pesos for two or more games. All other B2B licensees must submit a 1m peso performance deposit.
As with fees, online games will be assessed for suitability individually, according to the framework.
“It is the duty of the Game Content Provider to request for approval of its games prior to launching in the PAGCOR-licensed gaming venues or PAGCOR-authorised gaming establishments,” it says.
Foreign-based affiliates and services must register with the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission, it says.
PAGCOR’s new rules also require disclosure of changes to company ownership and board membership for all categories of B2B licensees.
Evan Spytma, CEO of leading online gambling operator Casino Plus and its host property, the Hotel Stotsenberg in Clark Freeport, told Vixio on Tuesday (May 6) that Casino Plus recognises that the new framework “brings increased compliance costs for operators.
“But we also see it as a necessary investment in long-term industry stability. While it may challenge smaller operators, it helps professionalise the ecosystem and raises the bar for quality and accountability,” he said.
“For us and our service partners, it creates a stronger foundation for sustainable growth in a regulated environment.”
In a client update on Thursday, Manila-based Arden Consulting said the folding of B2B affiliates and service providers into PAGCOR’s regulatory territory “signals a tightening of regulatory oversight” and will impact a large volume of operators that previously acted without government scrutiny.
Meanwhile, the only segment of the foreign-facing POGO ecosystem to avoid last year’s ban will be subject to updated rules, Arden Consulting said in a note on April 17.
The Special Class of BPOs (business process outsourcing companies), or SCBPOs, whose staff must be at least 90 percent Filipino, are permitted to run call centres for foreign-facing customer enquiries, complaints and registration, as well as VIP services, fraud monitoring, and processing rewards and promotion, according to PAGCOR rules.
Arden, which has SCBPO clients, said the new rules will likely leave operator fees untouched while introducing probity checks and taking a harder line on SCBPOs with target markets where online gambling is illegal.
SCBPOs “servicing clients in well-regulated jurisdictions will not be affected,” the Arden report said.
Other changes to SCBPO regulation will likely include tighter compliance checks on operators over other government agency requirements, such as health rules and social security obligations, and tougher punishments for breaches of rules and regulations.
