For a while, online gaming in the Philippines looked unstoppable. In 2025, it became the biggest source of the country’s gambling revenue, pulling ahead of traditional casinos for the first time. But that story has hit some turbulence.
The slowdown has now carried well into the second half of 2026. PAGCOR’s latest nine-month figures show electronic gaming revenue down more than 37% year on year, following changes to payment access and weaker consumer spending.
Here’s where the market is sitting now.
Online play overtakes casino floors
Let’s start with last year’s big jump. According to PAGCOR’s 2025 figures, e-games and online platforms accounted for 50.77% of total industry gross gaming revenue. That’s the first time online play outpaced licensed casinos.
The wider online casino sector has also broadened its game mix. Platforms such as BetKing’s online casino show how operators increasingly combine crash games such as Aviator and JetX, slots from major suppliers and live dealer tables within the same lobby.
The e-wallet curveball
But there was a catch.
In August 2025, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas ordered supervised payment providers to remove in-app links that redirected users to gambling websites. GCash and Maya removed those links from August 16.
That mattered because e-wallets had become deeply embedded in everyday payments in the Philippines. GCash alone had 81 million active users at the start of 2025.
PAGCOR chairman Alejandro Tengco later acknowledged that the change contributed to weaker online gaming revenue during the third quarter.
The move did not eliminate digital payments for gambling altogether, but it removed a particularly direct route between major e-wallet apps and gambling platforms.
2026 slowdown continues into the second half
The weaker trend that appeared during the first half of 2026 has continued.
PAGCOR reported that electronic gaming revenue fell 37.23% year on year during the first nine months of 2026, dropping from PHP44.03 billion to PHP27.63 billion.
That decline was considerably steeper than the fall recorded by licensed casinos, where revenue was down 3.22%.
PAGCOR’s total revenue for January through September fell 23.41% to PHP64.41 billion.
The latest figures build on the first-half results, when revenue from e-games, e-bingo and bingo grantees had already fallen 41.85% to PHP18.6 billion from PHP32 billion a year earlier.
Tengco has also pointed to wider economic pressures, including Middle East tensions and their effect on consumer spending, as factors weighing on the market.
The market looks different from a year ago
The contrast with 2025 is sharp.
Last year, Philippine gambling revenue reached a record PHP396.14 billion, with online gaming contributing PHP201.12 billion and accounting for just over half of total industry GGR.
That milestone seemed to confirm online gambling as the strongest growth engine in the market.
The first nine months of 2026 have complicated that picture.
Electronic gaming remains a major part of the Philippine gambling industry, but its revenue has proved more sensitive to changes in payment access and consumer spending than the record 2025 performance suggested.
The Philippine online casino market showed how quickly digital gambling could expand. The latest figures are now showing the other side of that growth story: when payment habits and economic conditions shift, online revenue can cool just as quickly.