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BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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Friday, January 27, 2017
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A NEW and sinister threat to the local horse-breeding industry, and perhaps to the entire horseracing industry in the country, has been gaining ground, and local authorities seem oblivious to the danger or maybe just looking the other way.
Some friends in the horseracing industry are saying that even the country’s thousands of cockpits could also be severely impacted by the new threat which, ironically, is called online sabong.
However, no one has really determined if online sabong is even legal, although it has been going on for more than one year already, and has raked in billions of pesos in revenues.
Without any clear status as to its legality, the taxes due the government from these billions in revenues are likewise hazy.
Why horseracing aficionados are up in arms against online sabong may not be immediately clear, but a visit to one of the hundreds of off-track betting or OTB stations in Metro Manila, particularly in Quezon City and Manila, gives us a better picture.
Online sabong is being shown in the OTBs, exactly during the schedules of the horse races being held in the country’s three racing clubs.
The OTBs are specifically designed to cater to horseracing only, but some enterprising guys saw the opportunity to use the OTBs to solicit bets from sabong enthusiasts.
The result? Betting in horseracing apparently went down by more than 25 percent since online sabong was introduced, because bets intended for the races inevitably were diverted to sabong, which is an easier game because you only choose from one of two fighting cocks to bet on.
And if horseracing revenues are down 25 percent, then the hefty horseracing taxes paid to the government are also down by the same amount.
Is the government getting back what it loses from horseracing from the online sabong operators?
I saw the big problem with online sabong first hand. As an occasional karerista, I visited a nearby OTB station in Quezon City recently and saw that there were only a few familiar faces in the crowd, and most of the customers were sabong people, most of whom I do not know.
The reason for the disappearing kareristas is easy to explain: You see, sabong people are usually noisy, shouting their bets against one another and cheering their favored fowl.
In contrast, before every race, kareristas tend to concentrate on the racing program because the betting is more complicated and needs careful study.
The result is catastrophic for the horseracing industry, as evidenced by the steep drop in betting revenues, because more than 90 percent of all racing bets are usually placed in the OTBs. Very few people go to the racetracks which are now located in Cavite and Batangas.
Because of the lower racing revenues, prizes for winning horses as well as the jockeys and trainers also declined.
As a result, horse owners are hesitant to buy new horses, impacting the horse breeders and related stakeholders.
Eventually, local cockpits could get hit by online sabong because the cockfighting crowds would prefer to just go to the OTBs to place their bets rather than go to the cockpits which charge entrance or gate fees. There are no such gate fees in the OTBs.
Some lawyer friends that I consulted say there is no clear ruling or guidelines as to the legality of online sabong.
I do not know the stand of government regulators such as Philracom and the Games and Amusement Board on the issue, but I think there is a need to define the legal basis of its operations before things get out of hand./PN
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