PAGCOR Expects Decoupling Endorsement "Very Soon", Executive Order to Follow

Chairman Alejandro Tengco told the IAG Academy Summit the split of PAGCOR's regulator and Casino Filipino roles now waits on the Office of the President, and that a PAGCOR app to steer players to licensed sites lands in the fourth quarter.

• The Governance Commission for Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG) will officially endorse PAGCOR's proposal to separate its regulatory and operating roles and send it to the Office of the President, Chairman and CEO Alejandro Tengco said in Manila on 15 September
• If the President finds merit in the proposal, an Executive Order will be issued; Tengco called decoupling "a major institutional overhaul with legal, financial, operational and human resource implications"
• PAGCOR will launch an app in the fourth quarter to give players "a convenient and reliable tool to access legitimate platforms", after the central bank's 2025 order forcing e-wallets to delink from gambling sites halved legal online transactions
• The self-exclusion register launched in 2025 has grown from 1,500 names a year ago to more than 26,000
• Decoupling has been a stated goal of Tengco's tenure in the Philippines since 2022, though the process appeared to slow over the past year, Inside Asian Gaming notes

The Regulator That Runs Casinos Says the End of That Is in Sight

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation has for decades licensed the country's casinos and online operators while running its own Casino Filipino venues, and its chairman has used a keynote in Manila to say the government's review of ending that arrangement is about to conclude.

Speaking at the IAG Academy Summit on the morning of 15 September, Alejandro Tengco said the proposal to separate PAGCOR's regulatory powers from its operations remains under review by the Governance Commission for GOCCs, but "we expect that the decision on this matter will be out very soon". "Once the review is completed, the GCG will officially endorse the decoupling proposal to the Office of the President," he said, according to Inside Asian Gaming. "It is at this stage that the Office of the President will evaluate the proposal, and if they find merit on the decoupling initiative, an Executive Order shall be issued."

Tengco was careful about timing. "While important stages remain, we want to make clear that this decoupling initiative is a major institutional overhaul with legal, financial, operational and human resource implications. For this reason, we must ensure that every step is carefully considered and properly executed." The direction, he said, is settled: "As preparations for decoupling are underway, we are already laying the groundwork for a future in which PAGCOR can devote its entire focus, expertise and resources to regulation."

An App to Find the Licensed Sites, and 26,000 People Who Want Out

The second announcement addresses the problem PAGCOR has lived with since mid-2025, when the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ordered e-wallets to remove links to gambling platforms. The order cut legal online gaming transactions in half, drove revenue down and, in the regulator's own account, left players unable to tell licensed sites from illegal ones. In the fourth quarter PAGCOR will launch an app that directs players to regulated sites "where safeguards, accountability, measures and responsible gaming standards are firmly in place", Tengco said, adding that "promoting regulated gaming should never be mistaken for promoting irresponsible gaming".

He also reported that the national self-exclusion list launched in 2025 has grown from about 1,500 registrations at this time last year to more than 26,000. PAGCOR has spent the year tightening the licensed market from the other side, capping cash-back and rebate incentives in May and warning in June that gaming revenue could fall by up to 19% in 2026.

Decoupling Fixes the Conflict Everyone Cites, and Removes the Revenue Everyone Depends On

A regulator that competes with its licensees is the structural criticism every reviewer of the Philippine market makes, and Tengco has agreed with it since he took the chair. The reason it has taken four years is in his own caveat: Casino Filipino's income, its staff and its property sit inside the same corporation that remits gaming revenue to the national treasury, and separating them means deciding who owns the casinos, who employs the workers and what PAGCOR's contribution to the budget looks like once it is only a licensing body. An Executive Order can create the structure; it cannot make the arithmetic disappear. The endorsement Tengco expects "very soon" will be the first time the question moves from PAGCOR's preference to a presidential decision, and the Office of the President will be weighing a cleaner regulator against a smaller remittance in a year when the regulator has already warned of a revenue fall.

The App Is an Admission That the E-Wallet Order Worked Against the Licensed Market

PAGCOR is building a channel to tell players which sites are legal because the central bank removed the channel that used to do it. The e-wallet links were the licensed operators' distribution; their removal did not stop Filipinos gambling online, it stopped them seeing which operators were licensed, and the black market took the difference. A government app that routes players to regulated sites is a reasonable repair, and the self-exclusion numbers show demand for the safeguards it advertises. But it is a workaround for a decision another regulator made, and its success depends on players choosing to download a state app rather than follow the links illegal operators still place freely on social platforms. The Philippines is discovering, as Brazil is on Instagram and the Netherlands with its search engines, that the fight for the licensed market is fought on distribution, not licensing.

PAGCOR has said for four years that it should not run casinos. It has now said the decision is someone else's, and imminent.