IT STARTED WITH a haircut. Or at least, it was supposed to. I sat at one of those familiar barber chains in SM Mall of Asia, where the chatter of scissors usually blends with the hum of fluorescent lights and gossip about basketball. But this time, the chairs were full, the queue long—and yet, no barbers in sight. Instead, there they were, a huddle of men, heads bent not over heads of hair but over a cellphone screen. Cheers, groans, fist pumps, and despair. They were watching online sabong.
“E-Sabong,” my barber muttered with a sheepish grin, as he finally came over. “They bet their whole day’s kita. Some go home with thrice the money, most go home with nothing.”
This isn’t a barber shop problem. This is a national malady.
‘The Filipino gambler must be saved from himself. And the Filipino dream must be rescued from the clutch of algorithms pretending to be destiny … It’s the country’s soul.’
LIKE TERMITES
Online gambling—particularly e-Sabong—has crept into Filipino life like termites into wood. Quiet at first. Then, everywhere. And then, suddenly, the house collapses. It has become the silent epidemic, infecting men from all walks of life: barbers, construction workers, seafarers, even government employees.
The stories abound, the kind that you dismiss until you realize they echo your neighbor, your cousin, your friend’s husband. A seafarer, six months at sea, bets away his hard-earned dollars before docking in Manila. Ashamed, he signs up for another tour, never going home. A father of four, who once dreamed of a sari-sari store, now dreams only of the next lucky cock.
BAKA SWERTE
We are a nation that believes in swerte. We live in the hope of winning big, of one lucky break to lift us out of poverty. “Baka ngayon,” we say. “Baka ito na.” And that hope—innocent, even noble at times—has been hijacked by a system designed to make us lose.
Research by social scientists has long revealed our cultural susceptibility to gambling: a mix of fatalism, economic desperation, and social bonding. In one study, it was found that 7 in 10 Filipino respondents knew someone personally addicted to online gambling.
A more chilling statistic: one in five admitted to gambling online themselves. And this was during the height of the pandemic, when jobs were scarce, and hope was scarcer.
ADDICTION WITHOUT PAUSE
What makes this vice so vicious is its accessibility. A cellphone. A GCash account. A few taps. And the illusion of control begins. But online sabong is not just a game—it’s a trap. It is engineered like a slot machine on steroids: 24/7 availability, endless matches, no cool-off periods, no mandatory breaks. And unlike the old cockpit sabong where at least one had to walk, sweat, and spend to place a bet, this one is inside your pocket, under your pillow, behind your child’s homework.
It is gambling without friction. Addiction without pause.
And it has real costs. Not just in pesos lost, but in families broken. In productivity drained. In the mental health crisis swelling in our silence.
Ask the barbers who lose their income. The jeepney drivers who skip meals after a losing streak. The mothers who pawn their last appliance to cover their husband’s debts. Or the retired government official who emptied his entire pension to save his son from gambling syndicates.
ALARMS SOUNDED
There are efforts, to be fair. Civil society groups have begun organizing forums and media campaigns to raise awareness. Church groups have returned to preaching about the evils of gambling—not just moral, but economic.
Psychologists have sounded the alarm, pushing for addiction services tailored to gambling, not just drugs. Some schools have quietly started embedding financial literacy modules into their curriculums, warning students not of bank loans, but of online bets.
Even a few LGUs—bless their courage—have passed ordinances banning internet shops from operating e-Sabong platforms within their premises.
PIECEMEAL EFFORTS
But these efforts are scattered. Piecemeal. And drowned by the billions made by operators who laugh all the way to the bank. Let us be clear: this is not just a vice. It is an industry. A well-oiled, algorithm-driven, data-fueled empire that thrives on our misery. It is enabled not just by smartphones, but by silence. And worse, by complicity.
The government, as usual, is late to the party it helped host. It taxes the industry and calls it regulation. It closes one site and five others sprout like mushrooms in the dark. It bans e-Sabong in name but looks the other way when apps and websites disguised as “games” flourish. There are no betting caps. No self-exclusion policies. No required warnings. No hotline for help. Just algorithms waiting for your next tap.
What we need is a complete overhaul. Regulation, not tolerance. Public health, not profit.
If we can ban cigarettes in schools and alcohol in buses, we can surely put limits on online gambling. If we can require warning labels on junk food, we can require digital guardrails on online bets. Caps on daily losses. Mandatory age verification. Real-time addiction tracking. A national helpline for compulsive gamblers. Programs in barangays to counsel families drowning in debt.
CULTURAL CONVERSATION
And perhaps, most urgently, we must begin a cultural conversation. One that redefines luck not as a miracle, but as a discipline. One that teaches our children that hard work isn’t the enemy of success. That gambling isn’t liberation—it is a new form of enslavement, delivered in high-definition and paid through GCash.
The Filipino gambler must be saved from himself. And the Filipino dream must be rescued from the clutch of algorithms pretending to be destiny.
Because it’s no longer just a haircut at stake. It’s the country’s soul.