Can E-Sabong Preserve the Philippine Sabong Culture?
Short answer is no. While e-sabong makes betting on sabong matches more convenient, it’s important to remember that sabong culture itself has its roots in traditional local cockpit sabong. While online sabong is more convenient, the true sabong experience can’t be exactly translated into the digital landscape.
What is the Philippine Sabong Culture?
Sabong itself isn’t unique to the Philippines but it at least has influenced about 6,000 years of ancient Philippine cultures in one form or another. As this had its roots in thousands of years of tradition, this blood sport can well survive without digitization as long as people can flock together to either a sanctioned cockpit or a free patch of land where two breeders can pit their roosters against each other.
Traditionally, sabong was treated as a social gathering for an entire community. Today, legal matches are held in official and regulated cockpits and several cockpits continue to be built today to further promote the sport. Illegal matches are called tupada or tigbakay and are held in secluded cockpits where it’ll be difficult for law enforcement to raid them. Additionally, tupadas occur more often and is more representative of the full traditional experience, especially since they’re held locally and a lot of local breeders and residents flock to the matches.
Even if sabong becomes illegal in the country, hardliner stubborn locals likely won’t stop tupadas in the many provinces in the country and both local breeders and residents will continue to meet for these competitions.
How Does E-Sabong Affect Philippine Culture?
E-Sabong made sabong more convenient and easily accessible by allowing bettors to bet on matches without looking for a local cockpit, especially if there isn’t an arena present in or near the barangay. This became extremely important when COVID hit and people can’t freely travel to cockpits to start betting as they then turned to e-sabong apps to place bets.
In addition to e-sabong apps, online communities sprouted up for like-minded enthusiasts to discuss the best fighting rooster breeds and get updates on certain gamefarms. However, these aren’t meant to fully accommodate online sabong bettors as they cover topics on breeding gamefowls and local tournaments.
While e-sabong did manage to support the Philippine culture during COVID and still manages to offering convenience to this day, it isn’t as critical to Filipino culture as tupadas and legal cockfighting.
How About Virtual E-Sabong?
While live online sabong effectively mimics the atmosphere of traditional cockpits, this is not the only e-sabong option available to bettors. Sabong International also offers virtual e-sabong with different gaming mechanics from that of traditional sabong. There’s no ulatan, ruweda, and 10-minute matches at virtual e-sabong and the matches are more fast-paced than the traditional matches.
Virtual e-sabong is an excellent alternative to actual sabong matches, but that’s all they’re good for and will not influence or affect Philippine sabong culture in any shape or form.
Conclusion
E-sabong cannot and will not have a hand in preserving sabong culture nor destroy it. The blood sport lasted thousands of years without any support from digital technology and it will continue being popular far into the future thanks to traditional locals in provinces participating in tupadas and in official sabong tourneys.
The only way for sabong to die out is through heavy urbanization that will get rid of rural land and effectively keep locals from breeding chickens in their backyards. As long as there’s room for sanctioned cockpits to be built and for tupadas to be held in the provinces, the Philippine sabong culture will continue to live on. E-sabong may be able to help improve popularity, but it will not preserve or destroy the culture.
