Month: August 2026

Việt Nam

Melco evaluates online gaming operations at City of Dreams Manila: Seaport

Posted on by Admin VietNamGaming

01-10-2020 |  

Melco Resorts & Entertainment is evaluating potential online gaming operations at City of Dreams Manila, although no decision has been made, according to Seaport Research Partners.

The brokerage said an online offering could strengthen the integrated resort’s competitiveness, as several rival casino operators in the Philippines already run digital platforms alongside their land-based properties.

The comments followed a meeting between Melco management and Seaport during the brokerage’s 2026 Annual Summer Conference. Senior analyst Vitaly Umansky outlined the discussions in a report published Thursday.

City of Dreams Manila previously operated an online gaming program known as Live Shots.

The resort began offering live-dealer games online on August 10th, 2021, followed by online slot machines on September 15th, after receiving the required approvals from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR).

The offering was available only to registered City of Dreams Manila patrons located within the Philippines. Melco said the program was shut down for maintenance on December 1st, 2021.

The company did not subsequently resume the service, and City of Dreams Manila was no longer operating an online gaming platform by July 2025.

Several competing Philippine integrated resorts, including Solaire Resort, Okada Manila and Newport World Resorts, have established online gaming operations targeting eligible domestic players.

PAGCOR has also reduced the share of online gaming revenue collected from operators. In January 2025, the regulator lowered the rate applied to e-games operated by integrated resorts to 25 percent, compared with 30 percent for other licensed e-game operators.

Sale remains possible at right valuation

Seaport said the outlook for City of Dreams Manila remained stable despite increasing competition in the Philippine gaming market.

The brokerage added that Melco could still consider divesting its interest in the property, but only at an acceptable valuation.

Melco ended a formal review of strategic alternatives for City of Dreams Manila earlier this year after concluding that the available options would not fully realize the property’s value.

The review was launched in February 2025 as part of the casino operator’s broader shift toward an asset-light strategy. Melco subsequently held discussions with potential buyers but did not complete a transaction.

Source: AGBrief

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Việt Nam

Indonesia suspends food-aid benefits for 1.49M households flagged for online gambling transactions

Posted on by Admin VietNamGaming

01-10-2020 |  

Indonesia’s Social Affairs Ministry (Kementerian Sosial, or Kemensos) has suspended staple-food assistance to 1,494,652 beneficiary households after a data-matching exercise with the country’s financial intelligence unit flagged them for suspected online gambling transactions, Social Affairs Minister Saifullah Yusuf said at a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.

The suspended households are recipients of the Program Sembako food-assistance scheme (also known as BPNT, or non-cash food aid), and the flagged transactions relate to the second-quarter 2026 disbursement cycle. Their third-quarter payments have been withheld pending verification. Saifullah, widely known as Gus Ipul, said the figure was drawn from data supplied by the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK), Indonesia’s anti-money-laundering agency.

The minister said a separate 794,475 households under the Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH), or Family Hope Program (a conditional cash-transfer scheme) had also been suspended over suspected online gambling activity. Some outlets have reported the PKH figure as a subset of the 1.49 million Sembako households rather than an additional group. The ministry has not published a consolidated, deduplicated total, and the overlap between the two programs remains unclear pending its review.

The second-quarter total marks a sharp increase from the roughly 600,000 households flagged in the equivalent 2025 exercise, a rise of more than double, according to the minister. Gus Ipul said he was concerned by the jump, noting that social assistance is intended to help low-income families meet basic needs rather than to fund illegal gambling. He acknowledged the flagged accounts could reflect deliberate use, unwitting involvement, or accounts controlled by third parties, and said the ministry would investigate before taking action.

Social Affairs Minister Saifullah Yusuf

Kemensos is conducting the review jointly with PPATK, the Ministry of Communications and Digital Affairs (Komdigi), and regional governments, with results targeted for the following week. The process is tied to the ongoing update of Indonesia’s National Socio-Economic Single Data (DTSEN), the unified beneficiary database the government is using to tighten targeting of social spending. The minister indicated that households found to have deliberately or repeatedly used aid funds for gambling would have their benefits permanently reallocated to other eligible recipients.

For context on Indonesia’s third-quarter social-assistance rollout, the ministry is disbursing PKH benefits to around 7 million households and Sembako aid to around 12 million households, meaning the suspended Sembako group represents roughly one in eight recipients of that program.

The suspensions land against a backdrop of persistent online gambling activity that Indonesian authorities have struggled to contain despite a nationwide ban. PPATK reported that online gambling turnover reached IDR86.82 trillion ($5.3 billion) across 467.32 million transactions in the first half of 2026, down roughly 12.9 percent in value from the same period a year earlier, but with transaction volume surging around 167 percent as operators shifted to more frequent, smaller-value deposits to evade detection.

PPATK head Ivan Yustiavandana separately flagged more than 6 million gambling-related transactions tied to World Cup betting in a single month, warning that gambling networks were quick to exploit heightened public attention around the tournament.

The agency has also documented a migration toward QRIS, Indonesia’s standardized digital-payment QR system, as the dominant deposit channel for online gambling, a shift that has complicated enforcement by routing illicit flows through legitimate rupiah-based payment infrastructure.

Source: AGBrief

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