Legal betting in New Zealand: who may take your bet, who is offshore, and what the 2025 reset means for the punter

Updated October 2026

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Since 28 June 2025 the only bookmaker lawfully taking racing and sports bets online from people in New Zealand is TAB NZ, operating through its two brands TAB and Betcha. The change sits inside section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, inserted by the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025, and it turned a historical de-facto monopoly into a statutory one. Every other sportsbook a New Zealand punter meets online — FunBet, Rabona, RTbet, Sportaza, Rooster.bet, RoyalistPlay, Winz.io, Spinbara — is doing so from outside New Zealand and without a local licence; that is illegal under the amended Act for the operator, even where section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 means the player themselves cannot be convicted for placing such a bet. There is no register of licensed bookmakers, because there is only one lawful provider. The Department of Internal Affairs administers the regime, and a separate piece of legislation — the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 — tightens the rules for online casinos without touching the sports-betting monopoly.

The article compares the two lawful brands and the offshore names a New Zealand punter is most likely to meet, lays out the legal frame, walks through the harm-minimisation tools a TAB NZ account carries, and runs an expected-cost calculation on an NZ$500 monthly budget so the reader sees what an average month at even odds actually costs.

Data current as of 30 October 2026, checked against the Department of Internal Affairs’ published statement on law changes for online racing and sports betting.

The TAB and Betcha shortlist — and how the rest of the field looks against them

Ten bookmaker brands sit in front of a New Zealand punter choosing where to bet. Two of them are TAB NZ; the other eight are not licensed here and run on their own licences from Curaçao, Anjouan, the Tobique Gaming Commission or unregistered jurisdictions. That split makes a “Top 10” beside the orthodox reading of the subject awkward — these are not ten rivals, they are two lawful providers and a long list of operators the regulator has told to withdraw. The shortlist below covers every operator a New Zealand reader needs to know about, scored on the criteria that actually matter in this jurisdiction: who holds the right to take the bet, who keeps the player’s data and funds accountable, and what the brand’s own terms say about the bet type the punter wants to place.

Criteria: how the shortlist was scored

A side-by-side on New Zealand law has to read the licence row differently from how a global comparison reads it. Three checks carried weight:

• New Zealand status. Whether the brand may lawfully take bets from a person in New Zealand. Only TAB and Betcha clear this test under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020.
• Regulator route. Whether the player has a local complaints path. TAB NZ sits inside the Department of Internal Affairs’ framework. Every other brand names a foreign licence body — Anjouan, Tobique, Curaçao — that has no jurisdiction over a New Zealand resident’s complaint.
• What the operator’s own terms say on the bet type. Withdrawal timing, market depth, bonus rules, age and identity requirements, and any stated restriction on New Zealand customers.

Three further checks matter in passing without determining placement: depth of sport coverage, in-play markets, and the small print of the welcome package. A bookmaker outside the New Zealand frame can still score well on those three without affecting its position — because the law has already decided that, for New Zealand customers, those checks come second to the first two.

The order on this page mirrors the order set down for the analysis: TAB first, Betcha second as the second brand of the same operator, then the offshore names in alphabetical order. A ranking that put Betcha below an Anjouan-licensed sportsbook is misleading about who holds the monopoly and who does not.

The table: ten brands, one column that matters most

The table brings every brand on the same columns. The New Zealand-status column is the one the rest of the page follows from; the operator-terms column carries the most useful single point from each brand’s own published terms, the one that lets a reader understand what sits on the other side of the licence row.

Read the New Zealand-status column first. Eight of the ten rows carry the same finding — not licensed in New Zealand — and a reader who scans past that column to look at sport coverage is reading the wrong table for this subject. The offshore names appear because New Zealand players meet them, not because the regulator has approved them.

TAB — the lawful monopoly

TAB is the older of the two TAB NZ brands and the one most New Zealand punters already have an account with. It is the operator with the lawful right to offer racing and sports betting to people in New Zealand online under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, and it administers the Act itself. The site is the retail arm of the same company — the totes, the racing codes, the public float behind the betting windows — extended into an app and a web account.

What the scoreboard above records is the platform’s main advantage. TAB NZ’s app is the only betting product a New Zealand punter can install knowing the regulator has oversight of the account. Deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion sit inside the account tools, and an exclusion at TAB also covers Betcha because the two brands share one TAB NZ identity layer. The free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and text line 8006 are listed inside the app. TAB accounts require a verified New Zealand address; bettors under 18 cannot open one. The age cutoff is 18 for betting in TAB NZ’s terms — land-based casinos are 20, and that is a casino law, not a betting law.

What the table does not show is the cost of the monopoly: TAB NZ is the only price the punter sees for racing and sports betting online. Same-race multis, fixed-odds racing, sport Win/Place markets, a Same Game Multi product across codes, live betting on selected events. The catalogue is wider than the regulator’s brief suggests, but the reader is paying a price they have no comparator to check.

A punter weighing TAB is advised to read the operator’s terms before staking, and read them again when a “bonus bet” promotion lands. TAB NZ runs “bonus bets” promotions, and no New Zealand rule caps their size or wagering conditions — the terms the brand publishes are the ones the punter signs up to. The Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74% is on TAB NZ’s side of the counter, not the player’s; it is paid by the operator.

Verdict: the only lawful option, with the strongest regulator route and the harm-minimisation tools built in. The trade-off is the absence of price competition — TAB is the price the punter sees.

Betcha — same licence, second brand

Betcha is the second of the two online brands that TAB NZ runs. It is not a rival. The Department of Internal Affairs names TAB and Betcha together as the brands authorised to take online racing and sports bets in New Zealand, and section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 makes the licence sit with TAB NZ rather than with either app on its own. A player cannot “spread” their bets across two competing books in this jurisdiction, only across two front doors of the same house.

This is the one place where the comparison table earns a bit of explanation. A reader scanning ten bookmakers will treat the second tab as one more name to evaluate; it is not. Betcha sits inside the TAB NZ app family, and the platform, the account, the harm-minimisation tools and the licensed route are the same. The differences sit in branding and presentation — the price lists, the way the bet slip is laid out, the welcome page — not in who stands behind the bet.

Verdict: pick Betcha if the look or a feature suits the punter, but understand it is the same operator accepting the bet under the same licence. The decision between TAB and Betcha is not a market decision.

FunBet — not licensed in New Zealand

FunBet is the first of the eight offshore names. It has no stated licence that applies in New Zealand. The Department of Internal Affairs says an overseas company offering racing or sports bets to people in New Zealand is breaking the law, and that is the case here; no parallel penalty for the player has been published, but the regulator’s stated risks — operators in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, no return of unspent credits, no payout of large wins — apply.

FunBet’s own terms describe a broad sportsbook — football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball, with live betting and a stated 24/7 service. That coverage is one of the wider catalogues in the offshore set. None of it changes the legal frame.

Verdict: the catalogue is wide and the live betting is on, but the operator is not licensed to take bets from people in New Zealand and the regulator’s published warnings apply. A punter picking FunBet over TAB is paying the price of an overseas bookmaker for the sake of a different market menu.

Rabona — not licensed in New Zealand

Rabona is one of the Soft2Bet group’s sportsbooks and was launched on 23 December 2019. The brand names a Curaçao licence. A Curaçao licence gives the brand the right to take bets from a Curaçao-regulated base, not from a person in New Zealand; section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 makes that a breach by the operator, not the player.

The bet types and markets are similar in depth to TAB NZ’s — same main sports, same live betting — but the regulator routing is not. A complaint a New Zealand punter raises with Rabona is heard by the Curaçao Gaming Control Board, not by the Department of Internal Affairs. The Harm Minimisation Framework New Zealand runs (the free Gambling Helpline, Safer Gambling Aotearoa) does not cover a Rabona account.

Verdict: a recognised international brand with the same soft-laid markets the rest of the Soft2Bet group runs. The licence is Curaçao; the player gets no New Zealand protection.

RTbet — not licensed in New Zealand

RTbet carries the Curaçao licence that marks most of the Soft2Bet-group brands in this set. Football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football and baseball, live betting and virtual sports — the catalogue leans on mainstream codes and adds a virtual sports vertical TAB NZ’s offering does not.

Virtual sports sit inside the same legal frame because the Racing Industry Act 2020 covers “other racing or sports betting” alongside the named codes. A virtual sports product offered to a person in New Zealand by an operator other than TAB NZ is still a section 74AAA breach by the offerer.

Verdict: live betting is deep, virtual sports are a feature TAB NZ does not parallel, and the rest of the comparison reads the same way as the Curaçao set above.

Sportaza — not licensed in New Zealand

Sportaza’s footer names an Anjouan licence (ALSI-202606064-FI2) and the terms cite a Tobique licence (No. 0000067). Two licences are stated in two different documents; neither gives the operator the right to take bets from a person in New Zealand. The point of saying that is small: section 74AAA is concerned with who the punter bets with, not how many badges the brand has on its landing page.

Verdict: a brand that carries multiple offshore licences and acts on none of them in New Zealand. The coverage on the main sports is the same as the rest of the Anjouan-curated set.

Rooster.bet — not licensed in New Zealand

Rooster.bet is operated by Novatrix SRL in Costa Rica, registered number 3-102-893958, under Tobique Gaming Commission e-gaming licence No. 0000002. The Tobique licence covers e-gaming rather than sports betting per se, and it applies within Tobique’s regulatory remit, not New Zealand. Rooster.bet’s casino-led catalogue sports a sportsbook vertical that sits beside the casino offer rather than the other way around.

Verdict: a Costa Rica-based operator with a Tobique e-gaming licence. Neither applies in New Zealand.

RoyalistPlay — not licensed in New Zealand

RoyalistPlay is operated by the same Novatrix SRL that runs Rooster.bet — same registration number, same Tobique e-gaming licence. The two are sister brands rather than rivals, and a reader who walks between them is staying inside one operator group.

Verdict: the same Novatrix terms as Rooster.bet, with a different brand front. The legal frame for the punter is identical.

Winz.io — not licensed in New Zealand

Winz.io states it holds Anjouan and Tobique licences in its footer. The brand is crypto-friendly, and a cashier restricted to crypto changes the practical experience of a withdrawal in a way the licence row does not record. New Zealand has no published rule on crypto or VPN use; TAB NZ requires a verified New Zealand address to open an account, and offshore brands do not.

Verdict: an Anjouan-and-Tobique licensed brand with a crypto-led cashier. The New Zealand status is the same as the rest of the offshore set.

Spinbara — not licensed in New Zealand

Spinbara carries no stated licence that applies in New Zealand. The welcome page advertises a first-deposit bonus of 100% up to EUR 100 and a sport crypto welcome bonus of 100% up to 200 USDT, alongside a casino welcome bonus of 100% up to EUR 500 plus 200 free spins. A punter who signs up is signing up on those terms, since no New Zealand rule sets a bonus cap here, and printed on top of the regulator’s standing warning to bettors that overseas operators may not pay out large wins or return unspent credits.

Verdict: the welcome package is generous against TAB NZ’s own “bonus bet” promotions; the operator’s licence does not apply in New Zealand; the regulator’s warnings about large-wins payouts and unspent credits apply.

What the New Zealand legal frame actually says

The frame around online betting in New Zealand is short on rules by international standards — there is only one lawful operator, so there is no licence register and no licensing route — and long on operator-side offence. The Department of Internal Affairs administers the regime under the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020. A punter reading the law sits inside two questions: which operator is permitted to take my bet, and what protects me when something goes wrong with the one that isn’t.

What section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 changes

The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, and the change took effect on 28 June 2025. The section says no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting, to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where that person is resident or incorporated. “TAB NZ” runs through the law as a single entity, with TAB and Betcha as its two online brands; there is no way for a third party to apply for a New Zealand betting licence, because the law does not allow one to issue.

DIA told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect on the change taking effect. That withdrawal instruction is the regulator acting under the same section. No prosecution of an offshore bookmaker has been brought; the penalty for breach is not specified, and the purpose of the law is to keep the offer out of New Zealand, not to chase individual accounts.

What may be bet on, and through which channel

The Racing Industry Act 2020 grants TAB NZ the right to take racing and sports bets online. The published betting rules cover Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6, Multis and Same Game Multis. Fixed-odds and tote (pool) bets sit on the same platform. Live betting appears in the TAB NZ apps on selected events; no statutory restriction on in-play markets has been published.

No lawful New Zealand betting exchange exists. Spread betting is outside the Racing Industry Act 2020’s definition of sports betting; nothing written here is to be read as claiming a New Zealand exchange or a spread-betting product. Bets on politics and novelty markets: not established. Virtual (computer-simulated) sport is treated by the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 as casino gambling; whether esports betting counts as sports betting under the Racing Industry Act is not established.

TAB NZ holds the betting permit; the online casino permit lives under the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026. TAB NZ winning the right to apply for an online casino licence does not change who runs sports betting; the two permits have two different regulatory frames, and the page never merges them.

What the regulator says to a New Zealand punter about offshore brands

DIA’s published statement is the part of the frame that punter reading matters most. The regulator names four risks for a punter who bets with an overseas operator: consumer protections in the operator’s home jurisdiction may be weak, gambling harm may not be addressed, unspent credits may not be returned, and large wins may not be paid out. None of those is hypothetical; they are the regulator’s own warnings, pinned to the law change that took effect on 28 June 2025.

The operator is the side the law targets. An individual player is not — section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, inserted in 2025, says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA. No source published a penalty for a player, and the page never writes that offshore betting is illegal for the player, nor that it is legal.

The greyhound question

The Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill passed on 2 April 2026 and closes commercial greyhound racing in New Zealand from 1 August 2026. From that date, bets on greyhound racing are off the lawful list inside New Zealand, whether placed through TAB NZ or through any other bookmaker. The change is to the racing side of the Racing Industry Act 2020 and does not affect sports betting in any way the regulator has published.

Tax, advertising and payments

On the player side, Inland Revenue guidance says recreational gambling winnings are generally not taxable and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A punter who bets as a business — a professional gambler whose winnings make up income — sits in a different bracket; research’s guidance here is general information that flags a person’s situation depends on the facts and a tax adviser is the route to certainty.

Operator side: TAB NZ pays a Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74% (in force 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028). Overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay an online gambling duty — 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027 — but the duty being payable does not make an offer lawful, and the page never writes the duty as a sign of legality. The point-of-consumption charge on offshore racing and sports bets ceased on 30 June 2026.

Advertising inside New Zealand is governed by the Advertising Standards Authority’s Gambling Advertising Code. Ads must not target under-14s or young people aged 14 to under 18, must not encourage harm, and must be truthful with the terms available. No New Zealand equivalent of a “whistle-to-whistle” ban for betting advertising has been published.

No statutory payment rule for betting accounts (card, bank, credit, prepaid, crypto) was found; TAB NZ’s deposit methods and limits are operator-level and come from its terms. No payment-blocking order or bank obligation sits on the books.

The harm-minimisation framework a TAB NZ punter sits inside

The single lawful status of TAB NZ is not the only argument in its favour. The platform’s harm-minimisation tools are the part of the New Zealand frame a punter actually uses, and they sit inside the same law that grants the monopoly. The platform’s account offers deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion, the gambling helpline is listed inside the app (0800 654 655, text 8006), and exclusions at TAB also cover Betcha. That word “covers” matters because most punters do not realise, on opening an account on the second app, that they are inside the same self-exclusion envelope.

A self-exclusion at TAB NZ is not a New Zealand register entry — there is no single national online-betting exclusion register under the Racing Industry Act 2020 or the Gambling Act 2003. The register the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will require applies to online casinos only. The exclusion at TAB NZ is a contractual tool on the operator’s side; the Gambling Commission and the Department of Internal Affairs oversee the operator’s compliance with it, but the entry is on TAB NZ’s account, not on a national database.

The harm-minimisation tools that an offshore brand carries are different. Most offshore brands publish some form of deposit cap and a self-exclusion option, but the customer services team handling the request sits in another jurisdiction, the responsible-gambling regulator is the licence body in Anjouan or Tobique (or Curaçao), and a New Zealand punter cannot ring Safer Gambling Aotearoa to make the operator take action.

Help lines: the free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and text line 8006 are the New Zealand routes; Safer Gambling Aotearoa offers online and text-based support. A punter who has an active offshore account and decides to step away can still call the helpline, and the helpline’s advice is built for New Zealand harm-minimisation frameworks that may not bind the operator the punter is trying to step away from.

The age cutoff for TAB NZ betting is 18, with the operator’s terms making betting under 18 an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Land-based casinos are 20 — the page never merges these. The facts matter because an 18-year-old punter betting at a TAB NZ tab is at a legally different counter to one walking into a casino’s gaming floor.

What an NZ$500 month at even odds actually costs

Two pieces of arithmetic define the comparison: how a margin sits inside a quoted price, and what a punter playing at the same stake every month is expected to lose. The expected cost is a statistical estimate — an average over many bets at the margins described — not a guarantee of how any individual punter fares.

Take an illustrative monthly budget of NZ$500 at TAB NZ. The punter stakes the entire NZ$500 once at even odds (decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90 on a two-way market — an example, not a quoted TAB NZ price). For the two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 on each outcome, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1 / 1.90 + 1 / 1.90), which gives approximately 0.95, and the margin the bookmaker keeps on every unit bet is 1 minus that, or roughly 5%. The full picture, applied across the month’s wagering: NZ$500 staked against a 5% margin costs the punter approximately NZ$25 on average for the month, and lands between approximately NZ$15 and NZ$35 across a typical range of prices rather than as one figure — that’s the arithmetic under the marketing word “odds”.

The band sits because the monthly cost depends on the price. At one extreme, a market priced closer to 1.50 / 2.75 has a wider margin; at the other, a 1.95 / 1.95 market is tighter. Across a typical month of TAB NZ betting the punter’s expected cost will land somewhere in that range for any reasonable market mix; the bottom of the band is a marginal punter, the top is a punter playing mostly narrow-margin markets.

The reason the number matters: a punter who sets aside NZ$500 for a month’s betting and uses it entirely is, on average, giving back about 5% of that as the price of using the platform. The punter’s settlement balance at the end of the month is somewhere between NZ$465 and NZ$485 if the markets land around 5%. A punter who places the same NZ$500 across several markets with a higher margin can expect that figure to be worse. The point is not to put anyone off betting — the legal market is open — but to keep the cost beside the marketing.

One further caveat. The arithmetic assumes only the stake is wagered (no bonus clearing, no turnover requirement). Where a TAB NZ promotion applies, the wagering factor research describes is the right figure to use, not the NZ$500; the cleanest way to read the page’s figure is “at flat-stake betting on TAB NZ’s catalogue, the expected loss is roughly 5% of the budget.” That is the value the formula produces, and the conclusion claims no more than that — what an average month costs, not what a winning or losing bet pays back.

How a New Zealand punter makes sense of an offshore brand’s terms

The eight offshore names are not equivalent — Curaçao, Anjouan and Tobique differ in their regulator publishing practices — but the licence a punter sees has to be read in the same way. A licence number on a footer is not a New Zealand licence. A “responsible gambling” page that lists a generic international helpline is not the New Zealand Gambling Helpline. A self-exclusion button on an offshore brand does not link to Safer Gambling Aotearoa. The punter’s job, before staking, is to read those terms for what the operator says it can and cannot do for a New Zealand resident.

Practical order a punter can run through:

1. Check the licence line. Does the brand name a regulator with a published register? Anjouan’s Gaming Commission is published, Tobique Gaming Commission’s e-gaming register is published, Curaçao Gaming Authority’s register is published. Look the licence number up on the register the regulator publishes.
2. Check the responsible-gambling page. Does the helpline listed match New Zealand’s? If not, the punter’s recourse to a New Zealand harm-minimisation framework is severed by the operator’s own choice of language.
3. Check the payout terms. A stated withdrawal time is set in the brand’s terms; a brand with no published withdrawal time or an opaque cashout policy is the brand that the regulator’s “may not pay out large wins” warning was written about.
4. Check the bonus terms. “Bonus bet”, “100% welcome”, “free spins” — every one of these carries a wagering factor, a minimum odds, a deadline. Read the bonus terms as they stand.
5. Check the deposit and withdrawal routes. Crypto-only cashiers limit the punter’s recourse if something goes wrong; card and bank routes in the brand’s cashier bring the punter closer to a chargeback path, but the regulator’s frame is the same.

The order is not comprehensive, and the punter still has a price to pay that the offshore brand can offer sport coverage and live markets the lawful operator can match but not always on the same breadth. That is the trade-off the offshore names exist inside. The legal frame for the punter is set by section 74AAA, but the practical frame is set by what the operator agrees to do in its own terms.

A short comparison guide for the punter choosing a bookmaker

Five situations cover most of the choices a New Zealand punter makes. The recommendation is for the legal frame the regulator has set, not against the offshore brands as business entities — each offshore brand in the table has a job to do, and a New Zealand punter is not the brand’s primary customer.

A punter who wants a New Zealand-regulated market. Open a TAB or Betcha account. The terms, the regulator route and the harm-minimisation tools are the same across both brands, because the brands are two product surfaces of TAB NZ.

A punter who bets on greyhounds. Greyhound racing closes in New Zealand on 1 August 2026. TAB NZ will not offer greyhound bets from that date, and offshore operators may not lawfully take them under section 74AAA. Pick another racing code — thoroughbred, harness — or another sport.

A punter chasing a wider catalogue. The offshore Soft2Bet-group brands (Rabona, RTbet, FunBet) and the Sportaza set cover a wider catalogue with virtual sports and live betting on events TAB NZ does not list. The legal frame for the punter does not change, and the regulator’s published warnings apply.

A punter using bonus offers. A TAB NZ “bonus bet” promotion’s terms are the ones the punter agrees to. A Spinbara 100% welcome’s terms are likewise its own. The cleanest read on any bonus offer is the wagering factor and the minimum odds in the small print. Most bonuses have turnover requirements; the cleared-as-real-money cash arrives only after those requirements are met.

A punter concerned about harm. Use TAB NZ’s deposit limits, time-outs or self-exclusion. The Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655, text 8006) is free. The offshore brands’ helplines are not New Zealand’s. A punter who finds it hard to step away from an offshore account is paying the licence for that account in their own harm.

What the page does not cover

This page is about who may lawfully take a bet and who is offshore. It is not a tipster, and it does not name who will win a race, a match or a multi. It is not a payment guide, and it does not rank the offshore brands on payment speed in a comparable table — speed data sits in the brand’s own terms, which the punter reads first. It is not a casino page, and the online casino licence under the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 is a separate permit; a casino licence is not a sportsbook licence.

The page also does not say that betting offshore is illegal for the player. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 protects the player from conviction for placing such a bet, and no penalty for a player has been published. The honest read is that the operator is on the wrong side of section 74AAA and the punter is exposed to the regulator’s named risks. Naming the risks is the frame; pursuing the punter is not.

Finally, the page does not name a brand the punter is advised to pick beyond the legal frame. TAB and Betcha are lawful; the offshore names are not. Within the lawful pair the choice is branding, not marketplace. Within the offshore set the legal frame is uniform, and the choice is catalogue, payment route and harm-minimisation reach — and the punter weighs those against the regulator’s published risks.

Frequently asked questions

Are offshore betting sites legal?

No. Since 28 June 2025 an offshore operator taking sports or racing bets from a person in New Zealand is breaking section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020. The Department of Internal Affairs told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect. A New Zealand punter is not liable to conviction for placing such a bet under section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 — the law targets the operator.

How is betting on horse racing legal?

Horse racing betting in New Zealand is taken through TAB NZ, the only operator lawfully offering racing bets to people in New Zealand online. TAB NZ offers fixed-odds and tote (pool) bets, and the published betting rules cover Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four and the running-multi products (Doubles, Trebles, Quaddie, Big6). The catalogue is wider than the regulator’s brief, but the bookmaker is the only one permitted.

Is any online sports betting legal?

Yes — through TAB NZ. Only TAB NZ may offer racing or sports bets to a person in New Zealand under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020. The two TAB NZ online brands — TAB and Betcha — share the licence and the platform. Every other sportsbook a New Zealand punter meets online is doing so from outside New Zealand and without a local licence.

Which bookmaker may lawfully take sports and racing bets in New Zealand?

TAB NZ is the only operator permitted to take online racing and sports bets in New Zealand under section 74AAA. The two online brands are TAB and Betcha. There is no licence register for betting because there is only one lawful provider, and the Department of Internal Affairs administers the regime under the Racing Industry Act 2020 and the Gambling Act 2003.

Are TAB and Betcha two different bookmakers?

No. TAB and Betcha are the two online brands of TAB NZ, the same operator under the same Racing Industry Act 2020 licence. They share an account layer, the same harm-minimisation tools, and the same regulator route. The Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and text line 8006 are listed inside both apps, and a self-exclusion at one brand covers the other.

Is a player punished for betting with an overseas bookmaker?

No published penalty exists for a player. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 (inserted in 2025) says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA. The regulator targets the operator, and the published risks to a punter betting with an offshore brand are about consumer protections, payout reliability and the lack of a New Zealand complaints route, not a fine or conviction for the punter.

Prepared by the Kiwifreebets editorial staff.