As Pogos exit, ‘e-sabong’ revival raised at House

NO LACK OF BACKERS Before it cropped up again in a House hearing on Tuesday, “e-sabong” was banned in May 2022 by the Duterte administration following the disappearance of 30 cockfighting afficionados. —Screengrab from Pitmasterlive

MANILA, Philippines — After President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered all Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) to stop operations, House members are now eager to find gambling alternatives to recover the economic losses from the ban.

During the House committee on appropriations hearing on the budget of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) for 2025, OFW Rep. Marissa Magsino asked Pagcor Chair Alejandro Tengco whether it was possible to legalize the now-banned “e-sabong” to help the agency continue to generate revenues amid the Pogo ban.

READ: Tulfo presses Pagcor to shut down remaining 789 e-sabong ops nationwide

E-sabong, or online cockfight gambling, was banned by former President Rodrigo Duterte in May 2022 following the disappearance of 30 cockfighters involved in e-sabong operations. President Marcos formalized the suspension in December that year.

Pagcor estimated that the government stood to lose P7 billion to P7.5 billion in revenues from the blanket Pogo ban.

READ: Medialdea orders PNP, NBI, Pagcor to probe disappearance of 31 cockfighters

“It (e-sabong) is still happening everywhere and there’s a lot of people that know it’s happening, so I think it’s better to just make it legal rather than keep it illegal and we’re not gaining anything from it,” Magsino noted.

Tengco, however, reminded the panel that until the Philippines decides to legalize e-sabong for good, the agency’s hands were tied.

“Only if there is an enabling law allowing it to come back, then that’s the only time we can exercise our jurisdiction (over e-sabong),” he said.

Magsino asked Tengco to submit to the committee a briefer about possible revenues that could be generated from allowing them to be legal as it is set to discuss the 2025 General Appropriations Act.

PCSO interested, too

At the budget hearing of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) also on Tuesday, the agency said it was set to study the feasibility of managing and regulating all cockfights—including online or e-sabong—betting to increase its revenues.

Deputy Speaker and Quezon Rep. David Suarez raised the possibility of the government managing, monitoring, and regulating cockfight operations, including e-sabong, to offset or cushion revenue losses and labor displacement from the total ban on Pogos.

PCSO Chair Felix Reyes told the House committee on appropriations, presided by senior vice chair Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo, that there was currently no law assigning to a national agency the mandate to regulate and control cockfight operations.

“It would be good to look into which agency has the better capability. Is it Pagcor? Because if it’s online, that really is Pagcor. Or the PCSO because we have the capacity to sell or entertain bets on a permanent outlet because of Lotto,” Reyes pointed out in Filipino.

He was responding to a query raised by Suarez, who asked if betting for cockfights could fall within the jurisdiction of the PCSO, to which Reyes responded that the agency could manage off-cockpit and in-cockpit betting stations.

Still prevalent

According to Suarez, cockfighting, including online sabong, was a billion-dollar industry, taking into account the feeds, the veterinary equipment, the breeders, and the jobs they produce.

“It’s an opportunity that we can look into just to define which agency can properly manage and monitor because one thing that we need to accept, number one, is it’s happening, but the problem is that the government is not earning because they are operating illegally,” he pointed out.

The Deputy Speaker also noted that the Pogo ban would cost the government P7 billion in lost revenues and cause some 25,000 to 35,000 workers to lose their jobs.

“So the question now is, how can we properly stop (illegal online sabong), regulate this, and put it in such a way where the government can earn income?” he asked, saying that cockfighting operations, particularly e-sabong, could offset or mitigate losses from the Pogo ban.

Suarez asked the PCSO’s legal division to craft a position paper on the potential revenues the government could earn “if we properly legalize and at the same time regulate this.”

“It’s still proliferating, apparently shown and produced [worldwide]. What’s worse, based on an intelligence report I received, what are shown are replays and not live. Spectators are made to think they are watching actual fights when these already happened and are done with,” he pointed out.

The lawmaker said this was the case because “there’s no proper regulation, no proper monitoring, no proper policies being implemented.”

Quimbo asked the PCSO to conduct a feasibility study, which Reyes agreed to “on the assumption that it would be managed by PCSO.”