Recent moves to impose significantly tighter regulations on the Philippines online gaming industry – including a ban by the central bank on e-wallet providers linking to online gambling platforms – will unwind regulatory progress and drive licensed operators back to the illegal market by removing the incentives that encouraged them to become licensed in the first place.
Evan Spytma, the CEO of leading remote gaming provider Casino Plus, outlined his concerns at the IAG Academy Summit this week, adding that such measures would make it near impossible for Filipinos to differentiate between legal and illegal sites.
The central bank’s order, issued in August, was in response to an ongoing senate hearing into the explosive growth of the Philippines’ legal online gambling market and followed an earlier action from regulator PAGCOR to remove all billboard advertising of gambling websites.
Spytma said the growth of the licensed online gaming industry – collectively referred to as eGames – had been largely driven by the ability of licensed operators to link through from popular payment platforms like GCash and Maya.
“Now what you’ve seen [with the central bank’s] blocking of GCash and Maya is an inability [by licensed operators] to market to the public,” he explained.
“Now you have all these operators saying, ‘Really? What’s the benefit [of being licensed]? I’m going to pay a 40% tax, for what?’
“That is what the government truly has to understand because they had been going in such a great direction. The illegal sites were all coming down. We had reached 50-50 in terms of legal sites versus illegal – and here we are.”
Spytma added that the blocking of GCash and Maya also ignored the fact that such platforms had already enforced a two-pronged Know-Your-Customer (KYC) process that provided enhanced protections for players utilizing licensed sites
“And now what do we do? We block them – kick all the players out to the wolves. And they have no idea what is a legal site and what isn’t,” he said.
“We need to refocus and get back to focusing on the real channels that are safe for the players and can abide by all regulations.”
PIGO v eGames
The potential decline of the Philippines’ legal online gambling market as a result of restrictive regulations currently being debated in the senate may not be all-consuming, with Spytma noting that even a total ban would potentially only apply to the RNG-style online casino operation and not the remote gaming model in which land-based, physical slots and table games are played from afar.
Under such a scenario, this so-called PIGO model would survive. It’s also why recent regulatory actions are viewed more favorably by the Philippines’ land-based IRs – even those offering online gaming platforms.
“From a Newport perspective, we’re actually okay with it,” said Mark Gilbert, a consultant overseeing Newport World Resorts’ online operations.
“We’re in the very early stages of what we have. Although our site has been up and running for a number of years, it’s been very stagnant but that will change in the coming months. So, [the restrictions] are actually okay with us because we haven’t advertised and we’ve never been on billboards. We’ve never been on GCash. For all these regulations to occur, it actually works out well for us. I think it works out well for the IRs, for the most part.
“Where it’s really hitting is the established online sites that have not been associated with IRs. They’re going to have to change their game plan going forward as far as how they source their players and how they market to their players.”
Spytma agrees that IRs can lean on their land-based businesses for marketing support but questions the need to target other established licensees.
“We can’t just blast everything up in the Philippine marketing space and expect players just to come to these sites organically,” he said.
“What a lot of the [online operators] don’t have is any other form of revenue. They were dependent on GCash and Maya for 90% of their revenue and now that that’s gone, so I think what you’re going to see is an influx of defaults from those operators and them also selling their licenses.”
Winding back RNG
In effect, proposals to implement a ban or significant restrictions on the Philippines’ online gaming sector would essentially wind the regulatory environment back to where it was a few years ago, with remote gaming providing land-based operators with further reach but those operating purely in the digital space largely frozen out.
This is because the explosive growth witnessed in the eGames sector in recent times has been primarily generated through RNG (random number generator) slots – what some might describe as pure iGaming.
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According to past PAGCOR announcements, gross gaming revenues generated by licensed eGames operators grew by 165% in FY24 to Php154.4 billion (US$2.70 billion) and by another 26% in the first six months of 2025 to Php214.8 billion (US$3.76 billion).
“When you’re talking about the live slot (remote gaming) product, the slots that are on Evan’s (Casino Plus) site and that we have on our site, those are the traditional PIGO operations that were started four or five years ago during COVID – and they didn’t have RNG slots. It was all live slots originally because that was serving a player base that wasn’t able to come to the casino at the time due to the pandemic.
“The real growth, though, has in the RNG products. That’s where now, since we are a legal market, everyone that was kind of in gray markets previously is coming in – companies like Pragmatic Play and Evolution which is bringing four or five different RNG brands.
“So, the growth truly is in RNG and the external provider products. The remote gaming side – yes Solaire is building a huge live casino studio, we still have our live slots, Okada has their live slots, but that’s a very limited supply of games compared to RNG where you’re getting thousands of RNG slots. That’s where there is true growth.”
And this, says Spytma, is a good thing.
“It’s not so much that the market overall is growing, we’re just taking away from the illegal market. The legal market is growing because now we are taxing an industry that already existed.
“Now we’re at this 50-50 stage where the legal market is roughly 50% of the total market and that’s a great start but whether or not it continues to grow, I think that’s up for debate right now depending on where the senate takes us.”
Spytma notes that the expansion of the Philippines middle class – a recent World Bank study suggested the Philippines could become a middle class society by 2040 – will inevitably result in online gaming growth but the regulatory environment will determine whether that growth occurs within the confines of the legal market.
Pushing for a regulated market
Global gaming giant Light & Wonder revealed this week that it has become the Philippines’ first licensed supplier and aggregator of online games to the local market, so the timing of the central bank’s move against payment platforms is far from ideal.
“Our understanding was that even the regulated and licensed operators did have a portion of their revenue coming through these wallets,” stated the company’s Managing Director International, iGaming.
“So, I guess for us as a new entrant, it’s a bit of a shame that now the pie is slightly reduced.At the same time, we’re happy when markets are regulated and that’s how we believe we grow sustainably as a company.
“It’s the only way forward so it’s not a huge surprise. The pie is a little bit smaller but it’s still a very, very interesting and sizeable market.”
