SP panel tilts towards allowing online ‘sabong’

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

 

The chairperson of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan’s (SP) Committee on Games and Amusement said that they will push two resolutions relative to cockfighting operations in Iloilo province.

The committee held a hearing on Wednesday to discuss the move to increase the spectator capacity in cockpits in the province, as well as the operation of delayed digital broadcasting of cockfight games or more commonly known as “online sabong”.

Invited to the hearing were representatives of cockfighting associations in the province.

Philippine Councilors’ League-Iloilo head and Board Member Ramon Sullano, the committee chairperson, said cockfighting associations were asking for the province’s support because their industry was “dying”.

Sullano said the committee came up with two resolutions which they will push to the SP plenary.

 

These resolutions are:

-request the national Inter-Agency Task Force on the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) to allow up to 30 percent in-person audience in cockpits;

-and to interpose no objection to delayed digital broadcasts of cockfights or online sabong.

“There are IATF guidelines prohibiting live [audiences], so what we have decided, together with the committee, is the delayed digital streaming of cockfighting activities inside licensed cockpits in the Province of Iloilo, and another resolution which we may possibly address to the IATF, is to increase the numbers of persons in attendance in cockpits during cockfighting activities in the province of Iloilo,” Sullano said.

The Department of Interior and Local Government’s (DILG) Memorandum Circular No. 2020-140 prohibits in-person audiences as well as online and remote betting and live broadcasting or telecasting of cockfighting.

Broadcasted cockfights, as operators told Sullano, were operating on an 8-second delayed broadcasting, which he said was against the current cockfighting guidelines by the Games and Amusement Board which only allowed up to 3-second delays to avoid game-fixing.

Sullano also said that they do not have a definite time frame on when they would deliberate on the resolutions, as they requested the position papers of cockfighting associations as well as data which could support their resolution.

But he hoped that they would be able to forward the resolutions by the next plenary session on February 16.