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Online in the Philippines30 June 2000PHILIPPINES -- 30 June 2000 -- As reported by Reuters: "The onslaught of the information technology revolution has indeed changed the way we live, play and do business. With Sports and Games Entertainment Corp. (SAGE), a local-owned company, set to launch this August its online casino gaming operations in the Philippines, even the way Filipinos do their gambling will never be the same again. The company recently acquired the license from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR) to operate and maintain an online gaming facility in the country. "SAGE executive Patrick Deakin said the online casino that they will be operating in the country will be the first one in Asia. "…He said players who will want to place real bets can charge it to their Visa or MasterCard credit card for dollar-denominated payment, or to a prepaid card worth R100, R250, R500, R1,000 or R5,000 as given out by PAGCOR. "Minimum bets are pegged at R20.00 or US$5.00 for the nine games offered by the SAGE casino. "…As for the revenue sharing formula, it has been agreed upon based on the license that the online gambling firm got from PAGCOR that SAGE will be paying PAGCOR `20 percent of its gross earnings, 5 percent of which will be remitted by the gaming regulation agency to the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) as franchise tax.' "…Deakin said it is hard to project future earnings from the online casino, but PAGCOR is looking at `a (projected) R60 million income share during the first two years of SAGE's Internet gaming operations.' "With SAGE's gaming system available in eight language versions, including Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, English, Spanish, and French, the online casino firm hopes that their broad adoption of the major languages in the world will help lure the targetted 10,000 locals and 115,000 `premium, high-end' foreign players by year-end 2000... |