PAGCOR confirms it’s looking at CEZA-licensed online gambling operators

Philippines-licensed online gambling operators may not escape President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-gambling purge, according to the local gaming regulator.

On Thursday, Reuters quoted Andrea Domingo, the recently appointed head of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp (PAGCOR), saying her agency was looking into the activities of the special freeport zones that license Asian-facing online gambling companies.

Duterte was sworn into office on June 30, announcing the same day that “online gambling must stop” due to its potential harms on local residents. Duterte’s missive led to this week’s announcement by gaming technology provider PhilWeb that it was shutting down its 286 eGames cafes after PAGCOR declined to renew PhilWeb’s license.

Domingo told Reuters that the “strong and repeated pronouncement of the president” had left PAGCOR with “no choice” but to scrap PhilWeb’s license, despite the resulting thousands of redundancies and the tens of millions of dollars in eGames revenue that the state-run PAGCOR will have to forego.