Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 6) — The closure of online cockfight betting or e-sabong operations would not dent the financials of dominant mobile wallets GCash and Maya, officials said.
Despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s decision to stop online cockfighting nationwide due to its social costs, executives from both e-wallets shrugged off potential impact on their operations.
“For the first quarter, less than 0.5% of our flow-through GTV (gross transaction value) as we call it came from there. There is no impact really on our revenue or our business,” Shailesh Baidwan, president of Maya previously known as PayMaya, said Thursday.
Without disclosing figures, Martha Sazon, president and CEO of GCash, said the president’s decision “doesn’t have a significant contribution in our transaction volume.”
Sazon said Friday the company’s growth trajectory remains positive.
“Our revenue and profit trajectory is really doing well, very positive. And we expect to end the year at even better levels than last year,” she said during a briefing.
Duterte was earlier hesitant to end e-sabong despite the disappearance of more than 30 online cockfight enthusiasts since April last year, arguing that the government had been earning ₱640 million monthly revenue from the new industry.
But on Monday, the chief executive said revenue collection from e-sabong operations was not worth the social damage from these activities.
