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The year ahead for Asian gambling jurisdictions promises more excitement, successes, disappointments and turbulence as new markets struggle to bloom, older markets stumble and even collapse, and reluctant governments come to terms with the momentum, subversiveness and immense reach of online gambling.
While the promise of land-based casino inroads into Southeast Asia and competition with Macau鈥檚 lucrative but plodding, politically constrained market continues to bewitch some observers, it is the environmental adaptability and political vigour of online segments in markets such as the Philippines, India and even New Zealand that catches the eye.
Such is the diversity and rapid evolution of Asian gambling that the largest regulated markets in the region 鈥 Macau casinos and Chinese lotteries 鈥 are now the most cloistered. The following outlook looks instead at those jurisdictions where regulatory and market movement is the most substantial, even fevered.
Thailand: A (Mined) Road Forward
Thailand leads the positive news for the Asian gambling industry entering 2025, with the parliament likely to pass an integrated resorts bill establishing up to seven resorts around the country.
Global land-based gambling operators, suppliers, consultants and other industry segments are warming to the prospects of Thailand succeeding where Japan and South Korea failed: creating a competitive, globalised network of major casino-resorts.
Key to the latest legislative effort is near unanimity of support for the government bill from lawmakers sufficiently distanced from anti-gambling activists and civic groups, and from the notorious nexus between the police force and gambling dens and online gambling operations.
The prospects for passage of the Entertainment Complex Bill by mid to late 2025 appear very good, but this would be the first step in a process vulnerable to Thailand鈥檚 perennial political instability and civic group hostiles and other parties willing to put up a fight.
The latest possible obstacles are growing public support for the casino-sceptical People鈥檚 Party, and criticism by party officials and anti-gambling forces of revisions to the bill that de-emphasise non-gambling attractions and investment.
Although the bill awards the Cabinet the final say on the number and locations of casino-resorts, ostensibly mitigating the potential for local government cronyism and corruption, critics have been quick to doubt the central government鈥檚 commitment to tight regulation and due consideration of tax revenue.
The Stop Gambling Foundation on December 28 lamented that the latest version of the Entertainment Complex Bill is a shell of the initial draft that required significant non-gambling asset development, with delivery criteria for hotels, shops and MICE facilities now heavily diluted.
A further and volatile problem for the Thai government and casino supporters is the ongoing nightmare that is Thailand鈥檚 geographical role in shunting trafficked labour to brutal online gambling and cyber-scamming precincts in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
While not as actively culpable as its neighbouring governments and militias, Bangkok has been less than aggressive and less than proficient in stemming the tide of victims.
And Thailand鈥檚 pro-Beijing policies may have enhanced the presence of Chinese online gambling networks on its own soil, potentially polluting public support for any form of gambling reform.
Kyushu University postdoctoral fellow Zhang Junqing wrote in the East Asia Forum on December 26 that Thailand鈥檚 visa-free policy for Chinese nationals enacted in March 2024, followed by an extension of stay for Chinese visitors from 30 to 60 days in July, 鈥渉as notably reduced the costs for Chinese operators to establish illegal gambling websites within Thailand鈥.
鈥淎s a result,鈥 he continued, 鈥淭hailand is increasingly likely to become a base for Chinese-organised illegal online gambling operations.
鈥淗osting such websites in Thailand allows operators to evade monitoring and enforcement actions by Chinese authorities, creating a growing challenge for both nations in combating cross-border online gambling crimes.鈥
How, or if, the government improves its handling of these challenges may yet affect public confidence in its ability to regulate land-based casinos.
Philippines: In with the New
Unlike Thailand, the dominant narrative out of the Philippines in recent years has been devolution: the criminalisation and unravelling of a lucrative but de facto lawless foreign-facing online gambling industry.
The ban on this sector, now in force for all but a small number of support services, leaves the authorities with a major task: to clean up the dispersing and downsizing, but still voluminous, detritus of the POGO segment, run by a mix of Filipino and Chinese bosses and staffed by thousands of Chinese migrants who have ignored government orders to leave the country.
This drama, and ongoing criminality linked to these operations, will fuel government headaches and headlines for years to come.
Still, the positive reality, and less visible narrative, is that the Philippine gambling industry is otherwise healthy, resilient under fire, innovative and confident. It is also surpassing Macau as an industry production and networking hub.
Land-based casino revenue has progressed solidly despite pandemic damage and Beijing鈥檚 assault on the travelling Chinese VIP segment.
But it is domestic online gambling that is leading the charge in terms of revenue growth聽鈥 entering the global top ten, according to 澳门六合彩论坛 GamblingCompliance estimates聽鈥 and in terms of regulatory evolution.
Business is booming with triple-figure annual growth and integrated resorts and other land-based casinos are lining up to set up online portals, which must be linked to land-based licensees.
The challenge for gambling regulator PAGCOR is now to switch from babysitting misbehaving POGOs to growing a more carefully monitored domestic segment.
Challenges already exist. Industry sources tell 澳门六合彩论坛 that a good proportion of the domestic segment鈥檚 growth derives from well over 100 unregulated, barely taxed operations whose payment channels remain unpoliced, making life all the harder for PAGCOR鈥檚 59 licensees (as of December 18).
However, that number of licensees has more than doubled in around a year, suggesting the segment is taking off and demanding more attention from regulators as operational and taxation challenges mount.
Another possible obstacle for the domestic segment is lingering hostility in Congress toward online gambling in any form.
However, if the segment continues to display a stable regulatory record, with little to no controversy involving violent crime or corruption, the odds of wavering lawmakers supporting this adolescent industry will improve.
Australasia鈥檚 Mixed Bag
In contrast to the slow-motion trainwreck that has been the Australian casino鈥檚 regulatory and earnings profile, and ongoing federal probes into compliance failures of sports-betting companies and slots operations, New Zealand has struck an intriguing balance of industry liberalisation and circumscription.
The Kiwis announced the legalisation of online casino and sports betting in mid-2024, with a delivery date of around early 2026 for a competitive field of up to 15 operators, complementing support for a beleaguered horseracing industry.
But New Zealand has also recently banned greyhound racing because of the code鈥檚 failure to stem incidents of animal cruelty.
Other reforms for 2025 include enhanced monitoring of land-based casino compliance after SkyCity and other casinos fell short on anti-money laundering, and tighter controls on slot machine use and licensing.
The Internal Affairs gambling regulator is wrapping up consultations for mandatory account-based play at SkyCity casinos and optional account-based play at other casinos, as well as casino game rule amendments linked to these changes.
The High Court has also ordered the compulsory surrendering of 鈥淐lass 4鈥 gambling (pubs and clubs gaming machine) licences if gambling in a location has ceased for four weeks and lacks departmental permission to continue.
New Zealand, however, is a single gambling jurisdiction, as opposed to Australia鈥檚 federal system, and the latter will continue to throw up contrasts and comparisons between state and federal government regulation in 2025.
Victoria state will continue to set the standard for strict regulation, but New South Wales and Queensland will struggle to live up to the recommendations of various inquiries into the industry as political and economic factors counterbalance industry accountability.
The federal government is likely to issue new advertising standards for online sports betting after elections in the first half of the year, but these will almost certainly not impose the blanket ban unanimously recommended by a cross-party committee more than a year ago.
This would offer some relief to a sector still fuming over the federal government鈥檚 withdrawal last month of research and development tax breaks for gambling companies, at a cost of A$10m ($6.2m) a year to the industry.
Additional potential landmines lie in wait for the land-based and online segments: federal transactions regulator AUSTRAC is set to heavily fine the cash-strapped Star Entertainment Group over serious AML and other breaches at its casinos.
AUSTRAC may slap heavy penalties on Entain over allegedly chronic AML failures, as well as on any combination of slots owners and operators in light of billions of dollars in laundered funds identified by the New South Wales (NSW) Crime Commission.
And New Zealand may yet have an indirect role in the fate of Australian greyhound racing. With NSW state greyhound racing and regulation in tumult all over again after insider allegations of relentless cruelty and indifference toward dogs, the state government may point to the New Zealand decision and find the courage and the momentum to complete what its predecessor legislated but backed away from: a full ban.
Japan, India and the UAE: The Waiting Game
Three other jurisdictions of primary interest in early 2025 are in a state of suspension as factors outside industry control shape the foreseeable future.
In Japan, the massive online casino market has officially changed its colour from grey to black as police commence prosecutions up and down the chain of supply and demand, including more than 100 online gamblers.
While in preparation for years, the enforcement process is barely out of the blocks, and absent legislative intervention by a thoroughly distracted Diet, the year to come looks grim for what was once a flourishing and diverse ecosystem of affiliates, foreign beneficiaries and gaming demographics.
However, moves are afoot to expand the regulated sports lottery segment, including expansion into leading sporting codes. Watch this space.
Indian gaming companies, locked in a battle with a punishing goods and services tax (GST), continue to hope for salvation of sorts from a traditionally sympathetic Supreme Court of India, whose deliberations on GST legislation and the legality of online skill gaming with stakes could reinvigorate the industry and guard against punitive state governments.
And, further afield, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), industry excitement is building as Wynn Resorts builds the federation鈥檚 first integrated resort and as suppliers obtain licences in support.
But with casino revenue still years away, and with no clear schedule for MGM Resorts International鈥檚 casino licence application, interim interest will focus on the possible opening of an online gambling segment and the breadth of its parameters.
A final watchpoint will be if UAE gambling regulator chairman Jim Murren will stay in his post after joining the board of MGM rival Resorts World Las Vegas.
