Modus vivendi up in SoNA?
It is being floated that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. will back new restrictions or even a ban on online gaming in his fourth annual State of the Nation Address next week.
“Many families are being destroyed by it, especially when used irresponsibly,” Marcos said on his YouTube channel last weekend.
Backing the moves are some members of Congress, as well as agencies including the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, Department of Finance, and the regulator Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) which are inclined towards controls to reduce social harms.
Major operators also issued statements, cautiously backing more regulation, but stressing that online gambling is too entrenched to eliminate and should be better conducted with legal oversight, which can raise badly needed revenue for the government.
While other countries that have legalized gambling have licensed certain forms of online betting, none appear to have gone as far as authorizing casino-style digital gaming for their citizens as has the Philippines.
Last month, however, the New Zealand government submitted legislation to begin issuing up to 15 licenses for online casinos.
After taking office three years ago, Marcos began reining in the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO), finally calling for their elimination in his State of the Nation address last year.
After the Marcos administration adopted a stronger stance against POGOs, infrastructure, bandwidth, and regulatory space were freed up for domestic-focused online gaming.
Now, it is the domestic online gambling that is causing social problems.
In March, Filipinos were estimated to have wagered P17.89 billion on electronic games, primarily online. This topped the P17.03 billion bet on casino-based gaming and was more than twice the amount wagered on electronic games throughout 2022, based on PAGCOR data.