Cambodia Suspends Casino-Streamed Online Gambling: What It Means for Dragon Tiger's Border Floors

Cambodia is the only country where casino operators publish Dragon Tiger rules on their own websites, and the country most often, if never verifiably, named as the game's birthplace. From October 2026 its licensed casinos may no longer stream gambling online. The tables stay; the cameras go.

What Was Announced

Cambodia will suspend online gambling operations streamed from licensed casinos beginning in October 2026, a decision attributed to Prime Minister Hun Manet and announced by Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sar Sokha on September 5, 2026, according to trade reports of the announcement. Officials were reported as saying that livestreamed casino gambling made it difficult to monitor the movement of funds whose origins could not be verified and to prevent technology-enabled crime.

The suspension is one strand of a larger campaign. The state news agency Agence Kampuchea Presse reported on August 18, 2026 that authorities had investigated 751 suspected scam locations and closed 605 of them between July 2025 and July 31, 2026, had investigated all 195 licensed casinos, and had revoked 20 casino licences and suspended 29 over the period, with 23 more expired. A Law on Combating Technology-enabled Scams was promulgated in April 2026. A later official tally with an August 31 cut-off gave different licence counts; this article anchors on the AKP figures.

Why Cambodia Matters to This Game in Particular

Dragon Tiger's connection to Cambodia is usually stated as origin, which no source documents, but it is real as presence. Ha Tien Vegas, in Kampot province on the Vietnamese border, publishes Dragon Tiger rules on its own site, ranking the Ace as the highest card and listing the game beside Baccarat, Bai Buu and Niu Niu for a clientele it describes as foreign passport holders. Lucky Ruby Border Casino in Svay Rieng, at the Prey Vor–Moc Hoa crossing, publishes eight-deck rules with the Ace low and a floor that also runs Tai Xiu, Fan Tan and Niu Niu, with its pages in Khmer, Vietnamese and Chinese. Cambodian law bars its own citizens from these casinos; the customers cross the border.

Neither operator publishes an online streaming product, so the suspension as described does not touch what either has put in writing. What it touches is the practice, widespread in Southeast Asia, of licensed casino venues hosting live-dealer studios that stream tables to players elsewhere. Vivo Gaming, one of the studios that lists Dragon Tiger in its catalog, names Cambodia alongside the Philippines as a studio location and staffs tables with Chinese-, Vietnamese- and Tagalog-speaking dealers. Whether Vivo's Cambodian studio streams from a licensed casino, and is therefore affected, is not something Vivo publishes.

The Second Door to Close in a Year

The Cambodian suspension follows the Philippines' permanent ban on offshore gaming operators, signed into law in October 2025. Between them, the two countries were the region's principal grey-market hosts for Asia-facing live tables. The studios that supply Dragon Tiger to regulated operators (Evolution, Pragmatic Play, Ezugi, On Air Entertainment, Live88) stream from studios in Europe, Latin America and, since 2025, Abu Dhabi, and are not the subject of either measure. The tables that are affected are the ones players in the region reached through unlicensed sites.

The exact effective day in October and the text of the underlying order had not been published at the time of writing.