30JILI: E-Sabong in the Philippines — What Changed in 2022

E-sabong — sometimes written e sabong — is the livestreamed, online-betting version of sabong, the Philippines’ traditional cockfighting sport. Every e-sabong operation in the country has stayed suspended since 2022, formalized by Executive Order No. 9, which President Marcos signed on 28 December 2022. In-person sabong at a licensed cockpit is a separate, still-legal format under long-standing local ordinances, and this page covers what changed, when it changed, and where to check the current position directly.

What e-sabong was, and what it never became

E-sabong took an existing, in-person match and added two things: a camera feed and an online betting account funded in advance. The match itself, the cockpit and the birds, stayed the same physical event.

	Live sabong	E-sabong (2021–2022)
Where the match happened	A physical cockpit	The same cockpit, filmed and livestreamed
How a bet reached the pit	Cash, placed in person	An app or website account, funded ahead of time
Regulator	Local government ordinance, PD 449	A PAGCOR-issued e-sabong operator licence
Status today	Still operates under existing local rules	Suspended nationwide

The e-sabong operator licence PAGCOR once issued no longer exists. Nothing described in that right-hand column is available anywhere today.

A cockpit that once ran e-sabong did not stop hosting in-person sabong when the online layer was suspended. The suspension applies to the online betting and livestream layer specifically, not to the underlying local licence a cockpit already holds for in-person events. That distinction is why headlines about “sabong” and headlines about “e-sabong” are frequently describing two different legal questions.

The timeline that ended it

1. 2021 — PAGCOR began issuing e-sabong operator licences, and the online format grew quickly on top of existing sabong events.
2. 3 May 2022 — President Duterte ordered e-sabong operations stopped, in a directive spoken during a taped Cabinet meeting broadcast. It was not a signed executive order.
3. Mid-2022 — The incoming Marcos administration kept the suspension in place through PAGCOR’s own directives, while the format’s legal footing stayed unresolved.
4. 28 December 2022 — President Marcos signed Executive Order No. 9, prohibiting the operation of e-sabong “under any name or platform” nationwide.

That fourth date is the one that matters for anyone checking the current rule: EO 9, not the earlier spoken order, is the document actually in force.

Executive Order No. 9 does more than restate the May 2022 order. It directs PAGCOR, the Philippine National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation to enforce the ban against any operator still running e-sabong under a different name or platform. That enforcement instruction is why the suspension has held rather than lapsed with a change in administration.

Sabong legal Philippines: where the law sits today

Live, in-person sabong at a licensed cockpit remains legal, run under Presidential Decree 449 and the ordinance of the local government hosting it. E-sabong is the part that changed. Executive Order No. 9 remains in force, and no later order or law has lifted it.

Format	Legal status today
In-person cockpit sabong	Legal, under PD 449 and local ordinance
E-sabong (livestreamed, online betting)	Suspended nationwide under Executive Order No. 9

Conflating the two is the single most common mistake in how this subject gets written about, since one column of that table changed and the other did not.

Why the shutdown happened

The stated reason behind the May 2022 order was public concern, including reports of sabong personnel going missing in connection with e-sabong operations. PAGCOR itself paused new e-sabong licensing as the concern grew, ahead of any formal order. Executive Order No. 9 later cited the need for stronger oversight of gambling activities as part of its rationale for the nationwide ban.

None of that public concern was resolved by a return to the old rules. The suspension, then the executive order, replaced e-sabong’s licensing rather than adjusting it.

Cockpit associations and some lawmakers argued the format supported livelihoods built around it, while critics pointed to the public concern above as reason enough to keep it closed. Executive Order No. 9 sided with the closure rather than a return under different rules. That is the order currently in force, whatever position either side takes on it.

Sabong’s betting vocabulary, as background only

Reporting on sabong involves terms like meron and wala, the labels for a match’s two sides, plus a shorthand for the odds a bettor hears called out. Those terms describe how a match was read, not a set of instructions for placing a bet.

Term	What it marks
Meron	The match’s red-side label
Wala	The match’s blue-side label
Kristo	The person calling odds between them

The full vocabulary, including sentenciador and tari, is covered on this site’s sabong betting terms page, written as background knowledge rather than a how-to. Scoring and how a match was settled, who called the result and what ended it, is a separate question from the vocabulary, covered on the sabong online rules page.

What 30JILI’s own lobby actually lists

30JILI’s own page groups its games under six category names:

1. SLOT
2. FISHING
3. Live Casino
4. Lottery
5. Sports
6. eSPORTS

Sabong is not among them. Nothing on 30JILI’s page offers e-sabong or any sabong product, and this site does not present it as available here. For how a live-event format like sabong differs from a certified, RNG-based casino game, see sabong vs casino games; for what 30JILI’s own game categories actually cover, see 30JILI’s games list.

How to check the current status yourself

1. Read Executive Order No. 9 itself on the Official Gazette, which prints the exact wording of the nationwide ban.
2. Check PAGCOR’s own public advisories for anything that updates or repeals it.
3. If the question is about in-person cockfighting specifically, confirm with the local government unit licensing that cockpit, since that licence sits outside EO 9 entirely.

The Official Gazette entry for Executive Order No. 9 carries the president’s signature, the date, and the full text of what it prohibits, which settles the question more directly than a secondhand summary. PAGCOR’s advisories are the second stop, since any change in enforcement would show up there before it reaches general reporting. A local cockpit’s own licence is confirmed separately, with that cockpit’s local government unit rather than with PAGCOR at all.

The same discipline applies to a casino’s own licence claims: read the regulator’s own list rather than a promotional page. This site’s guide to checking a PAGCOR licence covers how, and its overview of the online casino market in the Philippines covers where licensed operators and their game providers and vocabulary in this site’s casino terms glossary fit into that wider picture.