Key Points
- Pagcor plans to release an app for mobile verification ahead of end-2026, based on the Pagcor Guarantee website launched in June 2025, allowing players to verify licences and file disputes.
- Approximately half of all websites related to online gaming in the Philippines are not licensed; this was confirmed during the Senate hearing in September 2025, where nearly 12,000 illegal gambling sites were counted in the country.
- Pagcor recorded a 20.33% y-o-y fall in its Q2 2026 gross gaming revenue at PHP88.13 billion, following the BSP’s e-wallet delinking order issued in August 2025.
When a country’s top gaming regulator tells parliament that half of all online gambling sites its players visit are illegal, that is not a policy footnote. It is a confession of how far the problem has grown. Standing before the House Committee on Appropriations on 24 August, PAGCOR Chairman and CEO Alejandro H. Tengco did exactly that, and then announced the regulator’s answer: a mobile application, arriving before the end of 2026, designed to put a licensed or unlicensed verdict directly on every player’s phone screen.
What the App Will Actually Do?
Tengco nailed down what these two goals are that the app needs to accomplish. “The PAGCOR app has two major goals: first, to stop online gambling from being done illegally and second, to keep players safe and ensure that they will only be playing on a platform regulated by PAGCOR,” he said. But the reason why this announcement is more than just a verification system is the dispute resolution system in it. As explained by Tengco, playing on a licensed website provides the player with a proper way to get things sorted out if anything goes wrong. As stated by Tengco in Filipino: “Basta’t may lisensya ang pinaglalaruan ninyo, mayroong process of resolution kung magkakaproblema kayo.” Translated: If you play on a licensed website, there’s a process for you. In an unlicensed one, there isn’t any.
Tengco also framed the app as a practical push for behavioural change. “For those who patronise online gaming, we encourage them to use the PAGCOR app. The easier it is for them to identify where they can legally play, the better we can protect them from illegal operators and the risks that come with unregulated gaming,” he said.
Three Steps That Most Coverage Missed
Most outlets have reported this as a single standalone announcement. The actual picture is a deliberate, escalating enforcement sequence that has been building for over a year. In June 2025, Pagcor launched the Pagcor Guarantee website, a public verification facility where anyone could check whether an online gaming provider was legitimately licensed before depositing money. Tengco called it “a key component of our regulatory framework to protect both the industry and the Filipino people.”
By September 2025, Pagcor was moving into active detection. A Pagcor official told a Senate hearing on illegal gambling that the agency was preparing an AI tool capable of detecting illegal websites in real time, every second, coordinated with the CICC, NTC, and DICT for rapid blocking. That same hearing had already put a number to the scale of the problem: nearly 12,000 illegal gambling sites were operating across the Philippines, covering more than 6,300 online casino games and over 4,800 online cockfighting sites.
The mobile app sits at the third stage of this sequence. A browser-based website reaches people who already know to look. An AI tool works behind the scenes without any player involvement. An app, placed on the same device Filipinos use to gamble, puts the check at the exact moment it is most needed.
Revenue Is Falling, and the Pressure Is Real
Pagcor’s Q2 2026 gross gaming revenue dropped 20.33% year on year to PHP88.13 billion, and the trajectory leading to that number tells its own story. Online gaming revenue had reached PHP59.3 billion in Q2 2025, just before the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ordered payment platform apps to remove in-app links to gaming sites. Revenue then fell to PHP41.9 billion in Q3 2025, PHP36.8 billion in Q4, and PHP36.3 billion in the first quarter of 2026, as documented in an exclusive iGB interview with Tengco published in May 2026. Licensed operators, squeezed between restricted payment access and illegal competitors operating without those constraints, are losing ground on both fronts simultaneously.
The iGaming market intelligence platform Blask puts the scale of what is still being missed in sharp relief: licensed operators currently capture less than 40% of total Philippine online gaming demand, despite that share nearly doubling over the past year. Shifting even a modest portion of the remaining unlicensed activity into the regulated market would carry significant revenue consequences right now.
Agencies, Fees and the Enforcement Net
It is important to note that the app does not work alone. The Pagcor is collaborating with the Department of Information and Communications Technology, the National Telecommunications Commission, and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordination Centre, with the implementation of enforcement focusing on the financial conduits that sustain illegal operations. Disconnecting such financial infrastructure will make illegal betting operations more difficult to conduct; however, the app makes legal betting operations more convenient.
On the operator side, Pagcor introduced minimum guaranteed fees from June 2026: PHP9 million monthly for operators carrying online casino games, based on revenue of PHP30 million at the 30% tax rate, and PHP3 million for those without casino games, such as sports betting operators. Those figures are set to rise again from January 2027. Some longstanding operators are reportedly weighing whether to stay in the Philippine market under those conditions. Tengco’s response to that, stated publicly, was measured but firm: the fees help separate operators who are serious from those who are not, because licences are in demand.
Expert Analysis: The App Is Right, But the Gaps Are Real
Here is what the official announcements do not address, and we think it matters. Pagcor’s Guarantee website has been live since June 2025. The illegal market has not moved meaningfully; Blask still shows licensed operators well below half of total demand. Convenience alone does not change habits at scale, particularly when unlicensed platforms frequently offer higher rebates, lighter registration requirements, and games that licensed sites still cannot carry. Tengco himself acknowledged to iGB that some international game suppliers actively avoid Philippine licensing because it would cut them off from the more profitable unlicensed grey market. That is not a peripheral concern; it is the supply-side engine keeping illegal platforms competitive.
Pagcor’s own restrictions compound the difficulty. Marketing limits, advertising windows, rebate caps and rising fees all apply to licensed operators. None of those obligations touches the unlicensed market, which continues operating without them. Tengco’s stated position is that strict regulation, not a ban, is the right path. We think the economic case for that is strong; the government collects well over PHP100 billion directly and indirectly from licensed online gaming annually. Banning the sector would not make Filipinos stop gambling; it would simply hand that revenue to operators outside any regulatory reach.
The app, though, needs something to back it up. Players need to see that reporting an illegal site actually leads to it being blocked quickly. They need to find popular games on licensed platforms. Tengco told iGB that major international suppliers are in discussions and will “surprise” the market when licensing is complete, saying those agreements will “choke the grey market.” If that follows through, the app gains real pulling power. If it does not, the verification layer sits on top of a market that still gives players practical reasons to go elsewhere. The Philippines is trying to regulate its way to a legal majority in one of Southeast Asia’s largest online gaming markets. That is the right ambition. The app is a serious piece of that push, and the next six months will show whether the rest of the enforcement chain can keep pace with it.
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