The government… is in a moral dilemma
The popularity of online gambling has created a conundrum in both the political and economic circles.
Populist politicians are jumping on the bandwagon to score brownie points with the public about the evils of online gambling.
The government, on the other hand, is in a moral dilemma. The gambling industry has provided a steady revenue to government coffers but spawned game addicts, and ruined individual lives and families.
The controversy created by online gambling has led to calls for an outright ban on gaming. A ban, however, may not be the ideal solution. The government must regulate it better because legal gaming is not the problem—it is part of the solution.
Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) has opposed the proposal for an outright ban on online gaming in the country, asserting that stricter regulations should be implemented instead.
Legal gaming is not just about about entertainment. It is an industry that protects players, fuels the economy and supports essential government services.
It is a cultural tradition that has evolved from the perya to the palm of our hands. If left unregulated, it could easily fall into the hands of bad actors.
Pagcor’s position and its contribution to the economy should also not be ignored. Half of the national government’s share from Pagcor’s income goes to Philippine Health Insurance Corp, (PhilHealth) under the Universal Healthcare Law, or Republic Act 11223.
The money funds critical treatments that underprivileged families cannot afford, such as chemotherapy, dialysis, major surgeries, and other life-saving interventions.
Pagcor is now the third-largest contributor to the government’s coffers, after the Bureau of Internal Revenue and Bureau of Customs.
Pagcor from from 2022 to 2024 collected over ₱87 billion in license fees from legal operators. The money went to fund schools, hospitals and roads. If gaming is banned and illegal operators take over, these funds will simply be funneled to offshore accounts or criminal syndicates.
The increasing number of Filipinos turning into online gambling addicts, though, is not lost on Pagcor. It implements several interventions to address gambling addiction among Filipinos, including public service announcements, assistance for self-exclusion and referrals to experts.
A ban on online gaming, meanwhile, will drastically reduce the financial resources of Pagcor. It will push gaming into the shadows—into unlicensed platforms that operate without taxes, without player protections and without any accountability.
Illegal markets are two to three times larger than the licensed sector. Banning legal platforms won’t stop people from playing—it will just drive them toward dangerous alternatives where minors can sneak in, fraud runs rampant and personal data is exposed.
Legal gaming—when done right—keeps players safe, supports essential public services and transforms a popular pastime into a positive economic force.
Unfair treatment
Fair and consistent rules lure investors to place their bets on the host country. Change the rules midstream and they will immediately pack their bags and seek new places, where returns on their investments are guaranteed and more predictable.
The Konektadong Pinoy Act encapsules these perceptions. The bill has dangerous precedents in the Philippines because it favors new entrants to the country’s telecommunications industry.
Foreign and local investors are wary of a change in business rules. It does not help our cause of attracting foreign investors, coming from a dismal record in the first quarter of the year. Foreign direct investments (FDI) fell 41.1 percent in the first three months of 2025 to $1.8 billion from $3 billion registered in the same period last year.
The new rules incorporated in the Konektadong Pinoy Act are not doing our telecom companies a favor. The bill favors new entrants on several fronts.
Foreign interests will easily join the telecom industry without being vetted on their areas of concern. A two-tier telecom policy, thus, will emerge.
Worse, the law allows new entrants a two-year grace period to meet cybersecurity standards—even as digital threats grow more sophisticated by the day.
The Konektadong Pinoy Act seeks to bridge the digital divide. But within the fine print of this newly ratified legislation is a structural imbalance that threatens to widen it instead.
The Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators (PCTO) has sounded the alarm on what it calls a two-tier regulatory framework—a system that favors new players by exempting them from the guardrails that have long governed the operations of incumbent telcos.
“We support providing broader connectivity to all Filipinos. However, the bill lowers the bar for accountability and opens the country to risks tied to unregulated infrastructure and potential foreign control,” says lawyer Froilan Castelo, PCTO president and Globe Telecom Inc.’s general counsel.
Under the measure, new data transmission players are no longer required to secure a legislative franchise or Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN). This is tantamount to removing the filters that are used to evaluate legal, financial, technical and cybersecurity readiness
For Castelo, the removal of the requirement for new data transmission providers to secure a legislative franchise means abandoning the vetting mechanism that had governed the incumbent telecom firms.
These tools once served as critical checkpoints—mechanisms for evaluating the financial soundness, technical capacity, and cybersecurity readiness of entities seeking to enter the telecommunications space.
But perhaps more worrying than the uneven playing field is the freedom given to new players to select their favored service areas, with no obligation to serve geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs).
