BestOnlineCasino.com publishes Southeast Asia online gambling market analysis

BestOnlineCasino.com has published an analysis of online gambling in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, the company said. The analysis, led by Gib Cheang, editor of the company's Malay-language Malaysian edition, compares payment infrastructure and regulatory approaches across the three markets.

According to the analysis, the Philippines shows how payment policy can move while gambling legislation stays the same. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas directed e-wallet operators in August 2025 to take down in-app links to online gambling platforms within 48 hours. For Q1 2026, industry-wide gross gaming revenue was PHP87.6 billion, a 15.9% decrease from PHP104.12 billion a year earlier. The electronic gaming segment posted PHP39.9 billion, down 22.4%.

Cheang warned that payment restrictions alone do not explain the drop. In his account, PAGCOR has put macroeconomic conditions at the top of its list of causes, with the loss of e-wallet links listed as an additional factor. "The honest answer is that both are in the number, and the regulator ranks the macro factor first," Cheang said.

Malaysia, by contrast, has no licensing system for online gambling run inside the country, so authorities lean on criminal enforcement and site blocking, the analysis says. Figures released for the period from January 2025 through May 2026 record 457,562 items of gambling-related content taken down by service providers, plus 1,778 websites blocked at the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission's request.

Cheang said the absence of official online gambling revenue figures for Malaysia should not be read as evidence of a small market. "The absence of a number reflects the absence of a reporting chokepoint, not the absence of activity," he said.

Thailand is the third market covered, where lawmakers pulled entertainment complex legislation in July 2025 before it could proceed. Cheang calls the plan closed under the present government instead of moving forward, and he recalls that earlier debate had put tightly regulated online gaming on a list of options a future government could take up.

For Cheang, the lesson of these three markets is that companies looking at Southeast Asia need to weigh payment infrastructure as well as conventional gambling rules. "Statutes define what is unlawful. Payment access determines what is practical," he said.