Is POGO good for the country?
It is 8 a.m. in an office tower in Makati. A female worker goes up the building to her office. She is not in corporate attire. She is in casual wear, but after an hour of sitting behind a dresser with a professional make-up artist doing her hair and make-up, she emerges as attractive as can be. She changes into a revealing dress – sexy enough to show her cleavage and some of her smooth and fair skin.
The uniform changes regularly, depending on the theme for the month.
Because Christmas is approaching, she may soon be wearing a sexy Santa dress.
The female worker is just one of the many online gaming dealers working for one of around 50 offshore gaming licensees in the Philippines.
The POGO (acronym for Philippine Offshore Gaming) ladies are finding gainful employment in this new and growing industry in the country. Their pay is decent enough for an eight-hour shift – around P30,000 a month, plus free uniform, food and make-up, according to an industry source.
All they have to do is to sit down in front of a camera as live dealers for an online gaming site. The online gaming site targets players – mostly men – outside the country. The players are mostly from China where players are known to have a penchant for games of chance and other forms of gambling.
The online gaming industry is made possible through the POGO, which the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor), the gaming regulator, introduced last year.
What is POGO?
Under the POGO landscape, offshore gaming is conducted via internet using a network and software offered
exclusively to offshore authorized players who have registered and established an online gaming account with the licensee.
Only foreigners based in another country are authorized to play, while foreign nationals in the Philippines and Filipinos residing abroad are not allowed to take part in the online gaming activity, according to POGO rules.
Prior to POGO, gaming company Leisure and Resorts World Corp. subsidiary First Cagayan issued the licenses for international online gaming sites. The online sites previously operated inside the Cagayan Economic Zone in the northern Philippines.
The locators are like BPOs but with gaming applications and they have back-end operations outside Cagayan. Some of the back-end operations -- such as the rooms with the live dealers -- were outside the Cagayan economic zone.
Pagcor, however, wanted to put all online gaming related entities outside the Cagayan economic under its jurisdiction.
Thus, it rolled out the POGO regime last year. It was part of the Duterte administration’s over all war on electronic gambling.
In coming up with POGO, Pagcor said this was meant to safeguard the welfare of the Filipino people by ensuring that no Filipino, whether minor or of age, are able to place bets on or are being exploited by online games.
Pagcor also said through POGO, it could better monitor online games to ensure that they are not being used as means to commit crimes or used as schemes to circumvent antimoney laundering laws.
Thus, online gaming companies with back-end operations outside the economic zone are required to get a POGO license.
It was also a new revenue generating outlet for Pagcor.
From each POGO licensee, Pagcor charges application and processing fees of $50,000 for e-casino and $40,000 for sports betting and another $200,000 and $150,000, respectively upon approval of the license.
Different components of POGO
There are different components of POGO, according to an industry source.
One form is online gaming, which players can access through the internet. These are the online versions of brick and mortar casinos.
According to a source, these are mostly mass-market games popular in China. Players can play just with their cell phones.
The other is with a live dealer, which is also quite popular.
Online casinos enable gamblers to play casino games through the internet.
A human dealer – or POGO ladies – run the game in real time from a casino gaming table or dealer room, which can be seen via a live streaming video link.
Players can communicate with the dealer using a chat function.
It’s essentially like being in a real casino ,except that the dealer is in another country, but virtually in front of the player.
Depending on the game a player chooses, the dealer will deal the cards or chips.
There are different forms of casino games that may be played online with a live dealer. Examples are roulette, blackjack and baccarat.
With a live dealer, playing becomes more exciting and not that boring or lonely.
It’s also more realistic in a sense that there is a human dealer instead of a computergenerated dealing activities.
Tomorrow: What are the advantages and disadvantages of POGO?