Go: Raise ante, bar poor bettors

Raising the bets will prevent the poor from placing bets in online gambling sites since upfront money will be needed, Special Assistant to the President for Investment and Economic Affairs, Secretary Frederick Go, has suggested.

“The regulation that I believe should be seriously considered is raising the minimum bet and raising the minimum entry point. Let’s say, instead of a P1 bet, it can have a minimum bet of, say, P100. That already reduces the frequency by putting the minimum bet of P100,” Go said during the panel discussion of the Economics Journalists Association of the Philippines Economic Forum 2025 at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in Manila on Monday.

Second, Go said, a regulation imposing a minimum entry fee should be institutionalized on all gambling sites, like in Singapore.

“So, for example, you cannot enter the platform with P100 and make a P100 bet. Because it means you enter, and you’re betting everything you have. There should be a minimum entry level,” he suggested.

Know your bettors

Other suggestions made by Go included a stricter KYC (know your customer) policy for all online gaming platforms, where he proposed that only players 21 years old and older would be allowed to access the application and gamble.

He suggested that government employees also be strictly prohibited from using any platform without fully registering by submitting their national IDs.

“The platforms can be stricter,” Go said.

For his part, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto said it is hard to ban online gambling as the huge revenues being collected on legitimate online gambling platforms are being used to fund government projects, particularly healthcare and education.

“I am against online gambling. I do not gamble to begin with. But I think PAGCOR is generating at least P100 billion in gaming revenues, more or less P50 billion on online gaming, and it would appear that is growing,” Recto said.