PHDREAM E-Sabong Ban: Timeline And What It Means

E-sabong has been under nationwide suspension since 2022. The shutdown did not arrive as a single announcement: it started with a spoken order and was formalised in writing later the same year, and the suspension it created has stayed in force every year since.

The short version is simple enough to state up front. Online cockfighting broadcast betting stopped operating nationwide during 2022, and nothing currently licenses its return.

E-Sabong Ban Timeline: 2022 To Executive Order No. 9

Date	Event
May 2022	President Duterte used a taped address to order a nationwide halt to online cockfighting operations. The order was spoken only, never put in writing at the time.
Throughout 2022	Public reporting on missing sabungeros and the social cost of round-the-clock online betting circulated widely, ahead of a permanent decision.
28 December 2022	Executive Order No. 9 was signed, putting the suspension into a formal written order for the first time.
Since then	The suspension has remained in force continuously, with no licensed return of online cockfighting broadcast betting.

Two separate acts sit behind that table, not one: a spoken halt first, and a signed order months later that put the suspension into writing.

Why The Suspension Was Ordered

During 2022, reporting on cases of sabungeros going missing after appearing at cockfighting events drew wide public attention. Concerns about the format’s wider social harm were raised publicly the same year, chiefly:

1. Missing sabungeros — reports of people who had attended sabong events and then could not be located.
2. Round-the-clock access — a format that ran betting continuously rather than during scheduled matches.
3. The scale of money moving through it — a volume of online wagering large enough to draw sustained public and press attention.

Those concerns were part of the public record officials pointed to while the halt was being turned into a lasting policy. This page states that reporting happened; it does not attach a figure to it, because no verified count belongs on this site.

What Executive Order 9 E-Sabong Formalised

Executive Order No. 9 is the written instrument behind the ban. It was signed on 28 December 2022, months after the initial halt, and its effect was to convert a spoken order into a standing, documented suspension of online cockfighting broadcast betting nationwide. What changed once it was signed:

1. The halt gained a written legal basis instead of resting on a taped announcement alone.
2. The suspension became attributable to a specific, dated instrument that anyone can check.
3. The gap between the spoken order and a formal record closed, months after it opened.

That distinction matters for anyone checking the legal record: the order carrying legal weight today is the one dated 28 December 2022, not the earlier spoken announcement.

Where Traditional Cockfighting Still Stands

The suspension targets the online, broadcast-betting version of the sport specifically. In-person cockfighting inside a licensed physical cockpit remains a separate, locally regulated activity under the Cockfighting Law of 1974 (P.D. 449), and nothing in the 2022 orders changed that.

Activity	Current status
Remote betting on a cockfighting stream, however it is delivered	Suspended nationwide since 2022
Attendance and betting inside a licensed physical cockpit	Locally regulated under P.D. 449, unaffected by the 2022 orders

What This Means For A Player Today

Nothing about the suspension has an expiry date attached to it, and no operator can point to a licence that covers online cockfighting broadcast betting today. Any site or channel offering one is operating outside the current legal position, whatever it claims. In practice, that means:

1. Treat every online sabong betting offer as unlicensed, regardless of how the site presents itself.
2. Never deposit money to a sabong stream or channel, on PHDREAM or anywhere else.
3. Use the odds and vocabulary on this site as background reading, not as an invitation to bet.

Two related pages round out the picture: how sabong odds like 10-8 are quoted covers the arithmetic behind a cockpit bet, useful context even where the format itself is suspended, and PHDREAM’s sabong pillar page explains where PHDREAM’s own menu stands on the category. The vocabulary behind the format — llamado, dehado and the rest — is unaffected by the suspension and still worth knowing.