By: Manuel L. Quezon III
Between 2021 and 2022, 34 individuals associated with cockfighting, known as sabong, a cultural phenomenon and one of the most popular activities in all of the Philippines, were reported missing in separate incidents across the island of Luzon. While the cases initially drew public and media attention, sustained investigation efforts declined over time. No remains were ever found, no suspects charged, and official updates became infrequent. The disappearances remained unresolved, with limited institutional follow-through and minimal public disclosure. But they appear to have a connection to e-sabong, the digital offshoot of traditional cockfighting in which users can bet on live-streamed cockfights through online platforms, all conducted over the internet, which has grown into a billion-dollar-a-month industry, generating as much as ₱640 million a month for the government, driven by the Covid-19 pandemic which kept people in their homes and online, based on figures from the government’s Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation or PAGCOR. Its expansion was driven by pandemic lockdowns and the rise of mobile betting, but in the absence of effective regulation, it became vulnerable to exploitation by criminal groups, which allegedly used the platforms for money laundering and consolidation of influence. Then, earlier this month, one of the detained suspects in the case filed a petition to qualify as a state witness and disclosed that the 34 missing individuals had allegedly been executed and their bodies submerged in Taal Lake, a magnificent volcanic caldera lake 50 km south of Manila known for its geothermal activity and historically limited accessibility and thronged by domestic tourists from the hot and humid lowlands.
The statement, if verified, reorients the investigation toward a forensic and environmental challenge previously unaccounted for in official efforts. It brings attention to ongoing gaps in forensic capacity, potential criminal links, and the difficulty of maintaining institutional focus on unresolved cases. The lake cited in the testimony is not the crater lake inside Volcano Island but Taal Lake — the larger volcanic caldera lake that surrounds it. Unlike the crater, which is highly acidic and inhospitable to life, Taal Lake is freshwater, supporting aquatic species such as tawilis and tilapia. Both swimming and fishing remain viable in its waters, despite its volcanic origin. Despite sustaining aquatic life, Taal Lake presents acute forensic constraints. Its depth, geothermal flux, and sedimentary instability complicate postmortem recovery. Though not acidic like crater lakes, its thermal profile and microbial activity may hasten decomposition and obscure remains. A 2017 study on tropical volcanic lakes suggests such conditions hinder long-term retrieval, rendering clean recovery increasingly improbable over time. The Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported financial links between e-sabong firms and members of political dynasties, pointing to blurred lines between regulation and vested interest. The missing sabungeros were not casual participants but informal workers: runners, handlers and small-scale bettors embedded in an unregulated economy. Their roles became expendable once they posed legal or financial risks. By the time e-sabong was suspended in 2022, much of the harm had already taken root. Disappearance emerged as a means of enforcement, sustained by institutional gaps. Impunity, in this context, was not incidental; it reflected structural conditions that allowed it to persist. As an Inquirer editorial put it, “To this day, not a trace of the men has been found since they were allegedly killed for running a game-fixing racket that angered big-time e-sabong operators. For all the notoriety of crime-infested POGO hubs, these don’t quite come close to the series of incidents that spelled the doom of e-sabong even during the gambling-friendly days of the Duterte administration – what Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla described in February as the “mass murder of people.” The Secretary of Justice is now spooked by the extent of what’s being uncovered. Remulla said intelligence reports suggest that the elusive mastermind behind the disappearances claimed he could even influence the Supreme Court. While withholding the identities involved, Remulla revealed that the suspected mastermind belongs to a group of around 20 individuals—some of whom are said to be current or former government and police officials—who have adopted a “corporate setup” to run the multibillion-peso e-sabong industry. At the height of the e-sabong craze, levels of crime rose drastically, with all members of society including police officers looking for a means of paying off their rapidly accumulating debts. Robberies, abductions and even suspected murders were all reported as occurring because of the widespread addiction to e-sabong. Despite these terrible social impacts, e-sabong’s rise was rapid, and its fall excruciatingly slow, this being thanks to high-flying gambling tycoons, immense government tax profits, and a president who failed to see e-sabong’s social impact until it was almost too late. As this 2021 story put it, says Lambert Lopez, chief financial operator of Sabong International (SI), the online cockfighting platform of Negros-based Visayas Cockers Club[:] “Actually, it takes a village to run it,” he shares. “We do live video streaming coverage from our arena studios transmitted via a dedicated, secure broadband connection. Then we direct the coverage to a website hosted on cloud servers. Inside the cloud servers is the proprietary game programming made by SI’s highly skilled developers. As for online marketing, we employ mobile technology making the platform very easy, convenient and fun to play.” The government generates a ₱640-million revenue from e-sabong operations in the country per month, a “pittance” compared to the ₱3 billion gross monthly income being earned by the online sabong firm of gaming consultant Atong Ang, according to a recent hearing of the Senate Public Order Committee which had Ang as resource person in connection with the disappearance of the 31 cockfight aficionados. Ang was asked by Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon regarding the amount of bets coming in in his company’s daily operations. Daily bets, he said, average ₱1 billion or ₱2 billion. “More or less ₱60 billion, po, a month,” he added. Of this, Ang said they get five percent or ₱3 billion a month, with their agents getting ₱2 to 2.5 billion. Obviously the take is worth fighting over. What Congress giveth, Congress taketh away. The old-fashioned but messy can be sanitized by being corporatized, firming u the principle that gambling is a government monopoly. Iris Gonzales, in a Philippine Star column, points out that the e-games sector, which offers a wider spectrum of games – including just about everything in brick-and-mortar casinos, plus the well-loved bingo – saw a phenomenal increase in revenue in 2024 alone, growing by 464.38 percent to ₱35.71 billion in the third quarter of last year from just ₱6.32 billion in the third quarter of 2023. For the whole of 2024, PAGCOR expects e-games revenue to have hit ₱100 billion at a time when revenues from licensed casinos in the third quarter of 2024 declined by 2.27 percent to ₱50.72 billion. Revenues from PAGCOR-owned games under the Casino Filipino brand fell by 26 percent to ₱3.64 billion as more players shifted to online platforms. Manuel L. Quezon III is a Filipino writer, former television host and grandson of former Philippine President Manuel L. Quezon. Parts of this appeared on his Substack blog The Explainer This is among the stories/excerpts we choose to make widely available.If you wish to get the full Asia Sentinel experience and access more exclusive content, please do subscribe to us for US$10/month or US$100/year.
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