Horse Racing in the Philippines

Philippine racing has a long pedigree. The Manila Jockey Club was one of Asia's oldest racing clubs, and the sport's biggest days, the PCSO Silver Cup and the Presidential Gold Cup, still draw the country's best locally bred horses. The venue map has shifted a lot over the past two decades, though, so where you actually go to watch a race today is not where your parents would have gone. This page walks through the tracks, the big races and how betting works, whether you are standing at the rail or betting from your phone.

Santa Ana Park in Cavite

Santa Ana Park is the racetrack of the Philippine Racing Club, sitting inside the Saddle and Clubs Leisure Park in Barangay Sabang, Naic, Cavite, along Governor's Drive⁹. Racing moved here from the old Santa Ana track in Manila: the original Sta. Ana Park closed down in 2008, and races were moved to the new racecourse in Naic, with the first meeting held on January 6, 2009¹⁰.

The move put the track roughly 40 to 50 kilometers southwest of Manila, a drive of about an hour and a half from the capital depending on traffic. For more than a decade it was one of the two main venues in the country, and it picked up the biggest dates on the calendar.

Santa Ana Park in Naic, Cavite, may be converted into a real estate venture in the next three years, so its racing days could be numbered¹¹. The big races it used to share with Metro Turf have moved on: the PCSO Silver Cup, a 1,800 meter race with P2.4M going to the winner, P400,000 to third and P200,000 to fourth, now runs on a Sunday at Metro Turf in Malvar and Tanauan City, Batangas¹². The sport's richest prize, the PCSO Presidential Gold Cup, has carried different prize structures over the years. The 2009 (37th) edition offered a P1.5 million top prize plus a P1 million bonus from the Philracom, with the runner-up picking up P500,000 and the third and fourth placers getting P250,000 and P125,000 respectively¹³. The 2013 (41st) edition carried a P4 million top prize and paid the runner-up P1 million, third place P500,000 and fourth place P300,000¹¹.

The track's racing days followed the pattern set out in the club's original legislative franchise: Saturdays, Sundays and official holidays, with occasional holiday-eve meetings starting no earlier than 5:30 in the afternoon¹⁷.

MetroTurf in Batangas

The Metropolitan Manila Turf Club, known to everyone as MetroTurf or MMTCI, operates the racing complex located between Malvar and Tanauan in Batangas province². The track sits in Barangay San Pioquinto in Malvar, and it is the venue that still holds race meetings today, publishing its own racing schedule alongside the historical schedules of the Manila Jockey Club and the Philippine Racing Club¹⁸.

Metro Turf sits in Malvar and Tanauan City, Batangas, a drive south of Manila. Race days are usually Sundays, as they were for the PCSO Silver Cup, a 1,800 meter race run there on a Sunday with P2.4M for the winner, P800,000 for the second placer, P400,000 for third place and P200,000 for fourth²⁰.

MetroTurf has taken over most of the big dates. The 2026 Philracom Lakambini Stakes Race was scheduled at MMTCI in Malvar²¹. In November 2022 the track hosted five charity races to help fund Team Philippines' 2023 SEA Games campaign²². The Philracom's stakes program has made regular stops here, including a Lakambini Stakes Race in August following a July race day at the MetroTurf Racing Complex²³. The PCSO Presidential Gold Cup was run at MetroTurf in Malvar in 2017, when the guaranteed winner's purse was P4 million, with P3 million from the PCSO and a P1 million bonus from Philracom²⁴. The 2024 PCSO Silver Cup was also held at Metro Turf in Malvar and Tanauan City²⁰.

The track has had its troubles. In 2023 a legislator urged the games regulatory board to suspend MetroTurf's permit over allegations of unpaid taxes on horse betting, and in January 2024 a jockey died after being trampled by horses at a race at the Metro Turf Club in Barangay San Pioquinto, a reminder that this is a live sport with real risks for its participants²⁵.

The Manila Jockey Club story

The Manila Jockey Club, or MJC, is the oldest name in Philippine racing and one of the oldest racing clubs in Asia. For most of the twentieth century it ran the San Lazaro Hippodrome, a 16-hectare track in Sta. Cruz, Manila, and the club also operated off-track betting stations throughout Metro Manila²⁷.

In 2003 the club made a decision that reshaped the sport: it relocated its old race track from Sta. Cruz, Manila to a bigger and more modern 77-hectare lot in Carmona, Cavite, to unlock rising property values on the Manila site²⁸. The new venue became the San Lazaro Leisure Park, later the San Lazaro Business and Leisure Park, and it hosted many of the sport's biggest days, including the 46th PCSO Presidential Gold Cup on December 9, 2018, and the 47th edition in 2019⁸. The 2021 Philracom-PCSO Silver Cup, a P4 million race over 1,750 meters, was run at the San Lazaro Business and Leisure Park in Carmona³⁰.

The end came quickly. In August 2022 MJC announced that its congressional franchise for horse racing would expire on October 23, and the club shifted its business toward real estate²⁸. By November 2022, both the Manila Jockey Club and the Philippine Racing Club, facing huge operational losses, had closed their racing operations³. The Philippine Jockey Club, a separate entity, still runs a website with live streaming of races, so you can watch Philippine racing online even without a track nearby³¹.

The big races: PCSO Silver Cup and Presidential Gold Cup

Two races anchor the Philippine racing year, both run under the banner of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, the same body behind the Philippines lottery.

The PCSO Silver Cup is the mid-year championship for locally bred horses. The details shift from edition to edition:

The 2017 edition, held on June 11 with post time at 4:30 in the afternoon, paid P700,000 to second, P350,000 to third and P250,000 to fourth⁷. The 2024 running paid P800,000 to second, P400,000 to third and P200,000 to fourth²⁰. The race is reserved for local horses, and the daily double pool on Silver Cup day in 2015 ran to around P920,000, giving a sense of the betting money a big card attracts³².

The PCSO Presidential Gold Cup is the blue-ribbon event, the race every owner wants to win. It is run over 2,000 meters, typically in December, and its prize structure has grown over the years:

The 2019 edition, hosted by the Manila Jockey Club, added a P200,000 cash incentive to the winning breeder²⁹. The race is limited to locally bred runners, which is why it matters so much to the Philippine breeding industry⁸. Hagdang Bato, one of the great Philippine racehorses, was the favorite going into the 2013 edition after winning it the year before³⁴.

Beyond these two, the Philracom Triple Crown series, three legs for three-year-olds run in June, July and later summer with P1.667 million per leg, is the test of the season's best young horses, and the Gran Copa de Manila in June is another domestic highlight⁵.

How to bet: on-site, OTB and online

Betting on Philippine racing is totalizator-based, meaning all money wagered goes into pools and the payout depends on how much is in each pool and how many people picked correctly. There are no trackside bookmakers; the tote is the game⁵.

The bet types are the familiar international menu plus some local variations⁵:

• Win
• Place
• Daily Double
• Forecast
• Trifecta
• Superfecta
• Quartet
• Pentafecta
• Pick-6
• Winner-Take-All
• Triple-Trifecta

For a first-timer, Win and Place are the simplest: pick a horse to finish first, or to finish in the top two. Trifecta asks you to name the first three finishers in order, and the exotic pools pay more because they are harder to hit.

To place a bet, you communicate and pay your bet to the teller at the main track's selling window, at an off-track betting station, or through the TELEBET phone system³⁵. Off-track betting stations, or OTBs, are scattered through Metro Manila and other cities, so you do not need to drive to Batangas to have a bet on a Sunday card. Admission to a racetrack is often free, so if you do go in person, the cost of the day is really just your bets⁶.

Racing days follow the traditional pattern of Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, with holiday-eve meetings allowed to start from 5:30 in the afternoon¹⁷.

Online, the picture is more limited. The government moved in 2020 to open up online betting to local residents, with new services including online cockfighting and horse racing³⁶. For online betting generally, PAGCOR controls all online gambling activities, and players can only legally join sites operated by it, so Philippine residents can legally join PAGCOR-licensed local sites³⁷. Some international bookmakers offer horse racing markets to Philippine players. If you win a prize through the PCSO side of things, prize claims are handled from 8:15 AM to 4:30 PM, Monday to Friday, with no noon break³⁸.

One thing worth knowing: the tote pools on Philippine racing are modest compared with racing in Australia, Hong Kong or Japan, so payouts on longshots can be large, but the pools on exotic bets can be thin. The daily double pool of around P920,000 on a big race day in 2015 gives a realistic sense of scale³³.

For the wider gambling picture, including casinos and other options, see gambling in the Philippines. If you are visiting rather than living here, the rules for gambling in the Philippines as a visitor are straightforward, and race betting is open to visitors on the same terms as locals.