The Philippine Amusements and Gaming Corp., the government-owned corporation in charge of licensing games of chance, appears to have made a good bet in allowing the expansion of electronic games, which mainly includes eCasinos and sports betting.
Pagcor data showed that revenue from electronic games, where it has 45 licensees—with 15 yet to start commercial operations, provided the push for the Philippine gaming industry’s revenue to post a 17 percent growth in first quarter to P81.7 billion despite the slack in casino and e-bingo earnings.
And the main mover of that segment is listed DigiPlus Interactive Corp., formerly known as Leisure & Resorts World Corp., an investment holding company whose main assets are its electronic games and online bingo operations licensed by Pagcor.
Electronic games in the first quarter increased revenue by more than six times to P22.5 billion from P3.51 billion in the same quarter of 2023. For the whole of last year, electronic games revenue total P33.17 billion.
In contrast, the revenue of PAGCOR-operated casinos declined 8.5 percent in the first quarter to P4.69 billion while licensed casinos posted an 8.2 percent slide in gaming revenue to P49.69 billion. E-bingo earnings dropped a sharper 21 percent to P4.81 billion.
Among the licensed casinos, those operating in Entertainment City and the National Capital Region, which includes Solaire, Okada, Newport World Resorts, and City of Dreams, showed the biggest gaming revenue contraction in the first quarter, sliding down to P39.12 billion from P45.8 billion.
DigiPlus, which also runs e-bingo operations, reported earlier that first-quarter revenue more than tripled to P13.63 billion from P4.18 billion in the year-earlier period due to retail games operations, primarily electronic games. It booked a net income of P1.99 billion for the quarter, nearly five times more than the P424.4 million posted in the year-earlier period.
The main difference from 2023 is the full operation of Arena Plus, sports betting platform that DigiPlus launched in February last year. Arena Plus is a gaming hub where bettors can wager on the results of local and international basketball games including the NBA and other domestic and global sporting events.
