As the Philippines continues on its path of regulatory evolution, The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) has taken steps to reduce fees for operators by 2025.
The steps were confirmed by Alejandro Tengco during a Keynote Address at the IAG Academy Summit on Tuesday, who stated that licence fees for online gaming operations will be dropped to 25%.
Furthermore he added that they will drop to 30% for other integrated resorts and land-based operators.
It comes as the region is taking significant steps to clean up its gambling sector and tackle the black market, with licensed integrated resorts set to see a reduction of 10% in charges on GGR.
Speaking at the Summit, Tengco stated his ambitions that it “encourages operators away from the grey markets and to embrace the mainstream”, as he unites with governmental forces to bolster the crackdown on illegal operations in the region.
It all forms part of the country’s efforts to depart from the FATF grey list and accelerate economic growth.
Figures in the region recently revealed that 74.78% of the illegal igaming websites so far detected as part of the clean up efforts have been blocked.
Ret. Gen. Raul Villanueva, President of PAGCOR’s Security Monitoring Cluster, has underlined the complexities of eradicating the black market.
He stated: “Of the 7,747 [illegal offerings], 5,793 [74.78%] were already blocked, and 1,954 are still active. “As of now based on my research, there’s no studies yet on payment blocking because some of these criminals use cryptocurrency as a mode of payment. And the banking system is very complex, offshore banking is very complex.
“But we [have reached] out to payment portals like GCash and Maya, and we had a meeting two weeks ago with a representative of Gcash and they promised us to purge on these illegal sites because we have submitted to them or have published only the illegal sites on our websites.”
PAGCOR, as part of its strategy, did deepen ties with social media giants in a bid to elevate the way it tackles unlicensed gambling advertising, which led to a significant reduction in exposure for the market.
“There was a reduction in Facebook ads, especially illegal sabong, because of these efforts that we’ve been doing. But they shifted to chat rooms like Telegram chatgroups they’ve been advertising and posting links on illegal sites”, stated Villanueva.
The Philippines is anticipating a year of growth when it comes to its igaming sector. The first half of 2024 opened the doors for ‘a banner year’ for the region as it declared a net income increase of over 120% year-over-year.
