Philippines

This is the year that forced us to embrace uncertainty and a different understanding about how time perception has an influence on our behavior.

As we close our final magazine of the year, I’d rather not focus on the doom and gloom wrought by Covid-19 and will instead look at how the pandemic has been a key catalyst for change in the gaming industry.

When we look back at 2020, regardless of business or geographical location, this has been a year of unprecedented disruption, whether personal or work related, to everyone’s way of life.

It has been a really unique and indeed surprising year to say the least. When live sport ground to a halt earlier in the year, we lost 95 percent of our live sport feeds in a matter of days. That would have signaled logically some tough and challenging times for all in the sector.

The Philippines continues to focus on the gambling industry to raise revenue to fund the government’s coronavirus response, this time passing a law to tax the country’s popular online cockfighting industry.

The Philippines government has passed a bill that will permit online bets on cockfights and expects to raise at least P1.25 billion ($26 million) in revenue from taxation. 

Udenna Corp. now holds 86.59 percent of PH Resorts following the issue of new shares. Prior to the transaction, the company owned 82.28 percent. The funds will be used to help finance the development of PH Resort's flagship project, the Emerald Bay Resort. 

Gary Bowerman, tourism industry analyst and director of Check-in Asia, speaks with Asia Gaming Brief managing editor Sharon Singleton about prospects for tourism recovery in 2021, how governments are seeking to boost domestic travel to plug the gaps and the challenges of getting regional airlines flying again.

Exodus is a strong word. The Greek term conjures up mental images of mass migration on a biblical scale and therefore shouldn’t be used lightly, yet it is hard to find a better way to describe what is happening in the Philippines right now.

At the conclusion of every year there are important industry events that need to be recapped, but there can be little doubt that even ten years, twenty years hence, 2020 will mark a dividing point in history between the pre-Covid and post-Covid eras.