Growth period: (2010～2015)
The Philippines is a multi-ethnic country located in Southeast Asia, with a mainland area of approximately 10 Hainan Islands. Although the country has a huge coastline, it lacks inland resources and has been colonized by other countries many times in history. Although it has experienced several periods of rapid economic growth, political instability and official corruption have hindered its progress, but he said To understand how the Philippines, a country known as the Land of Thousand Islands, played an important role in nurturing the gaming industry in the growth of the online gaming industry, we must first go back to the year 2010. During this period, there were very few Chinese people on the streets in the Philippines. It was extremely difficult to eat Chinese food at that time, let alone the Chinese supermarkets and restaurants that can be seen all over the streets now.
From 2010 to 2015, in the Clark Special Economic Zone of the Philippines, about 60 kilometers away from Manila, the capital of the Philippines, in the southeast, the first batch of online gambling gangs that moved from mainland China to the Philippines settled here. Including the early prototypes of several large-scale gaming groups that everyone is familiar with today, these first batch of online gaming industry bosses, bookmakers, and bookmakers from the mainland have used various methods to make money here. Taking root in a piece of land, of course they are all facing the huge domestic gambling and lottery market.
At that time, the regulations on iGaming in the Philippines were not very complete. These gambling gangs used different methods to find ways to obtain long-term stay visas. For example, some of them obtained non-gaming formalities by continuously extending tourist visas or setting up leather companies. The work visa protects the business, but to put it bluntly, it is still operating in hiding. It can be said that it is not even the size of the company. Of course, there were several large-scale raids by the Philippine government during this period. The largest raid wiped out more than a thousand people and deported them back to their home countries and were no longer allowed to enter the Philippines. This also led to the death of some smaller-scale raids. Or gambling gangs lacking political and business connections lost their qualifications in the first round of competition.
With the Philippine government's occasional crackdowns and raids on these illegal online gambling gangs, in order to operate stably in the long term, it is urgent to obtain a formal business license and legal identity, and online gambling in the Philippines is A license is issued by CEZA (Note: First Cagayan, the first Cagayan, was officially established in 2003. It is the earliest and the first to claim to be the only legal online gambling license agency in Asia. First Cagayan is listed in the United States. The company is headquartered in Cagayan Province, Philippines, and the company is regulated by the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA), which is the Cagayan Economic Zone Authority). This offshore economic (offshore) permission document represents the offshore online Gambling is legal in certain special zones in the Philippines, and gaming companies within the special zones can also set up branches outside the zones to operate. It is precisely because it provides services to online gambling companies that the Philippine government gave First Cagayan the right to properly authorize, manage and supervise the fairness of the games of these online gambling companies at that time. In fact, CEZA’s real original intention at that time was to ensure that these online gambling companies’ live-action videos were not fraudulent?! Are instant lotteries and sports lotteries fair and open? Its real intention is to protect the rights and interests of gamblers on these online gambling platforms. If any online gambling company that holds a First Cagayan license commits fraud or fails to pay out money, it can file a complaint and safeguard its rights through First Cagayan. However, Most gamblers are unaware of these benefits. The gambling gangs that hold CEZA licenses can finally be called gambling companies with legal and formal operations.
However, even if the Philippines had a formal license policy, there were only a very small number of companies that could obtainthe developmentlicenses at that time. TC-Gaming Group was one of the few groups that had a formalthe developmentlicense at that time, and it was also one of the few technology-based companies in the Philippines. R&D company. However, most private lottery groups still give up applying for licenses, and the main reason behind this isthe development. Due to the high license fees, many private lottery gangs who are reluctant to pay to apply for licenses have mostly moved to some high-end villa areas hidden in the Pasai area, or to more remote low-rise buildings, apartment buildings, old office buildings, etc. that are less conspicuous. In the building, they hide and operate in a low profile despite high risks. Generally speaking, these private lottery groups vary in size, with an average number of about20 people. After deducting the cost of license fees, these unlicensed private lottery groups can earn relatively more profits, but it is often difficult.There are two main problems with stable long-term operations: 1. Since there is no formal license and a normal office environment, the recruitment of personnel will be particularly slow, which limits the development of the team. 2. The sudden raids by the Philippine government and various risks have also indirectly led to gang members being more willing to transfer to a licensed formal gaming company for development. Difficulties in recruitment and staff turnover have made it even more difficult to operate an already small team. Therefore, the hit-and-run business model of making quick money has become the main way of survival for this type of gang. Most of the common methods used by this type of private lottery gang to operate handicaps are to attract gamblers with a large number of discounts at the opening of the market. If the gamblers are lucky and win a lot of money (usually50large amounts of funds above RMB 10,000 will be monitored intensively), so gamblers will never be allowed to withdraw money from these private lottery markets. Private lottery gangs that dispersed after almost making enough money were also heard from time to time. However, the vast majority of them encountered forced raids by the Philippine government and had to terminate their operations. With the clarification of Philippine government regulations and active crackdowns, the private lottery gangs that originally survived the first wave of crackdowns have gradually withered away because they failed to transform into regular companies. The end of these illegal gambling gangs has also ushered in. The dawn of a new round of growth in the gaming industry.
After entering the growth stage, the number of jobs requiring a large number of manpower has also increased in response to the increasing business development. The problem of manpower recruitment also shows the difficulties faced in recruitment in the Philippines, even though the Philippines has abundant and cheap local manpower. , but since it is targeting the Chinese market, language is the biggest problem, not to mention understanding Chinese culture and even the types and gameplay of Chinese gambling games. During this period, even though major gaming companies were beckoning to the domestic labor market with high-wage policies, because the Philippines is located in Southeast Asia, Chinese people generally choose to work abroad, which is less attractive than the first-choice European and American countries. For iGaming companies that are in the growth stage, human resources issues have also become the primary difficulty affecting their development. In this way, on the one hand, we continue to cooperate with domestic human resources agencies to recruit people one after another. At the same time, the recruitment teams of major companies have also set their sights on young international students studying in the Philippines. Because the benefits offered by the gaming company at that time were better than various local work opportunities in the Philippines, and the working environment can be mainly communicated in Chinese, and international students do not need to apply for additional work visas to increase costs, and they have already adapted to life in the Philippines, etc. With its advantages, it quickly became the first choice for recruiting manpower for these Philippine gaming companies. During this period, most of the jobs for international students were still in customer service positions. Today, in many high-level positions within large groups, there are one or two international students who have stayed and developed today after graduation.
Looking back at the growth period of the Philippine online gambling industry, CEZA played a very key role in the period from 2000 to 2015. During this period, the development of the online gambling industry was relatively healthy and stable, and the Philippines also became famous because of these unexpected visitors. affect economic development in the next 10 years. During this period, most of the Chinese people who came to the Philippines were mainly for technical positions and generally had a high level of education. The vast majority of customer service positions were also occupied by international students with certain cultural qualities, whether in terms of moral behavior or social aspects. The appearance is also relatively decent. From the perspective of the quality of gaming employees during this period and the perspective of Philippine society, the Chinese are generally very popular with Filipinos. The next stage enters the peak period, which is another interesting story. Let’s talk about it today, and we will talk about it in the next issue.