Who may lawfully take your bet in New Zealand this year

Updated October 2026

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The short answer: TAB NZ, through its two online brands TAB and Betcha, is the only operator the Department of Internal Affairs permits to take online racing and sports bets from people in New Zealand. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force since 28 June 2025, drew a closed market that did not exist before. There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is only this one lawful provider, and every offshore bookmaker accepting bets from a New Zealand address is in breach of the same section. The Department told those providers to withdraw with immediate effect. The player does not carry a published penalty, but the player does lose New Zealand protection by betting elsewhere, and that is the practical consequence this page is written around.

Current as of 26 October 2026, licence status verified against the Department of Internal Affairs “Law changes for online racing and sports betting” statement.

What the 28 June 2025 change actually did

The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA, and the amendment took effect on 28 June 2025. Its operative line is short. 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. The law does not care whether the operator runs from Malta, Curaçao, Anjouan or a Costa Rican free zone; if the customer is in New Zealand at the moment of the bet, the offer falls inside the prohibition.

A few consequences fall out of that wording.

First, the law targets the operator, not the 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 operator in breach of section 74AAA. No published penalty for a player was found in any of the regulator’s releases. What the player does lose is New Zealand protection — the consumer-protection floor that the Gambling Act 2003 and the Racing Industry Act 2020 build under TAB NZ.

Second, the change closed a market that had been partially open. Before 28 June 2025, a small number of licensed racing and sports bookmakers operated under older arrangements; the amendment replaced that landscape with a monopoly, run by TAB NZ under a long-term partnership with Entain.

Third, the law does not geo-block offshore websites at the network layer. New Zealand does not require ISPs to filter betting domains. The enforcement model is liability on the operator, who can be pursued through the regulator, alongside the practical pressure of being told to withdraw.

Fourth, the law is narrow in scope. It covers racing and sports betting. Online casino games are governed by a different statute — the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 — which licenses casinos and does not extend the betting monopoly. A casino brand holding a New Zealand online casino licence is not, by that fact, licensed to take racing or sports bets from New Zealanders. The two permissions travel on separate tracks and do not stack.

TAB NZ pays a Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74% of its betting revenue, in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028, which funds harm-minimisation work including the Gambling Helpline and Safer Gambling Aotearoa. From 1 January 2027, overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents will pay online gambling duty at 16% of profits (12% before then), but the duty is a tax on the operator; paying it does not amount to a licence to take bets from New Zealanders. A bookmaker paying duty is not lawful unless it is TAB NZ.

Greyhound racing: a separate, time-limited change

The Racing Industry (Closure of Greyhound Racing Industry) Amendment Bill passed on 2 April 2026 and ends commercial greyhound racing in New Zealand from 1 August 2026. From that date, no New Zealand operator — TAB NZ included — may offer bets on New Zealand greyhound racing, because the races no longer exist. Offshore operators may not take bets on New Zealand greyhound races either, since the product is gone.

Thoroughbred and harness (trots) meetings continue under the Racing Industry Act 2020 and remain part of TAB NZ’s fixed-odds and tote programmes. Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6 and the standard Win, Place and Each Way bets stay available through TAB NZ.

Player protection in the licensed environment

The licensed environment, which means TAB NZ, carries a stack of safeguards that an offshore bookmaker does not. The 18+ age rule for betting is set in section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020, and TAB NZ accounts require a verified New Zealand address and ID before a withdrawal can clear. The TAB NZ app exposes three harm-minimisation tools by name: deposit limits, time-outs, and self-exclusion, with the exclusion applying across both TAB NZ brands (TAB and Betcha), so a person who self-excludes from TAB is also excluded from Betcha. The free Gambling Helpline is 0800 654 655, with a text line on 8006.

There is no single national online betting exclusion register as of this writing. The exclusion register the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will establish is for online casinos, not sports or racing. Self-exclusion at TAB NZ is consequently TAB NZ-wide, and a person wanting a broader block has to install it on each brand individually.

Recreational gambling winnings are not taxable for the player under Inland Revenue guidance, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable for the player. A person who bets as a business is a separate case, and general tax advice belongs to Inland Revenue or an accountant, not to a betting guide. None of this changes the offshore picture: betting with TAB NZ is a domestic transaction under New Zealand supervision; betting with an offshore operator is not.

Responsible gambling: what the tools cost a player who uses them

The point of the responsible-gambling shelf is straightforward and worth taking seriously. New Zealand’s licensed betting environment is one bookmaker, and that bookmaker is bound by harm-minimisation rules the regulator reads against the Racing Industry Act 2020. The tools are operator-level, not statutorily prescribed line items, which means their detail sits in TAB NZ’s terms rather than the Act — but DIA’s monitoring of TAB NZ, the Problem Gambling Levy, and the Gambling Helpline stack are statutory, not optional.

The cost of those tools sits in two places. First, in conditions a player actually meets: an 18+ age bar, identity and address verification before a withdrawal, deposit limits set by the player, time-outs of fixed lengths, and self-exclusion that runs across TAB and Betcha in one move. None of these are discretionary choices the player can talk their way out of; verification is required, not negotiable. The 18+ bar is an offence for the operator to take a bet from a minor and an offence for the minor to place one, and TAB NZ’s account-opening flow reflects that.

The second cost is what opting into a limit actually does. A deposit limit caps what flows in; a time-out stops new bets for the period chosen; a self-exclusion closes the account for the period chosen and the casino and betting track together for the player. The tools are coarse, on the model of “stop betting” rather than “spend less”. A punter who wants a daily cap of NZ$20 will need to set it themselves at the limit-setting screen and live with it; the regulator does not write a default cap for recreational accounts.

The honest gap, and a reader looking for it will look: New Zealand has no statutory deposit or loss ceiling for sports betting. The caps discussed above are operator-set, and the only statutory knobs are the age floor, the verification requirement and the levy. The punter who wants to keep play small sets the limit themselves, and an offshore bookmaker offers no setting of the kind at all.

Help exists if a player wants it. Safer Gambling Aotearoa, funded by the Levy, runs programmes outside TAB NZ. The Helpline is free from a New Zealand landline or mobile, and the text line is free. Both are confidential. Asking for help does not appear on a credit file or a bank statement, and the call does not generate a record that follows a person across operators. Picking up the phone is the cheapest step a reader in trouble can take.

A short, sharp reinforcement belongs here. The bookmaker sells recreation, not a system. Any code, tipster sheet, AI prediction or “lock of the day” promising regular wins is selling something the maths of bookmaker margins cannot deliver, and a reader who buys it pays twice — once to the seller, once to the margin. The maths compounds the same way at TAB NZ and at every offshore site.

The shape of the shortlist, and the criteria it rests on

The review of New Zealand legal betting has one awkward feature that no other page in this kind of guide usually carries: there are exactly two lawful online brands, both run by TAB NZ, and they are one operator, not a rivalry. Every other brand a New Zealand reader meets online is unlicensed for betting here. The shortlist is consequently two columns wide rather than ten columns wide, and the comparison below treats each card on its own.

The criteria the cards use:

• Licence and New Zealand status. Is the brand TAB NZ, the licensed operator, or one of its two brands, or is the brand unlicensed in New Zealand? For unlicensed brands, the entries record the licence the operator itself names — Anjouan, Tobique, Curaçao, Costa Rica — without letting that licence count as anything in New Zealand.

• Products the operator actually runs. Sports covered, racing covered where the operator offers it, live betting, virtuals or esports where relevant, casino products where the operator runs them, and the markets a New Zealand punter usually looks for: head-to-head, line betting and handicap, multi and same-game multi.

• Account opening and banking. Verification steps, accepted currencies, the payment methods the cashier page lists, deposit and withdrawal mechanics, payout timeframes where the operator publishes them, and any minimum or maximum a New Zealand reader hits.

• Safer gambling and consumer protection. Safer-gambling tools in the account, self-exclusion mechanics, support lines promoted at point of access, and whether the operator offers a New Zealand complaints route (none of the offshore brands does, by virtue of jurisdiction).

• Honesty about fit. What the brand does well, what it does poorly, and which reader it suits. The honest framing for any offshore brand is that it is not lawful for betting in New Zealand, the player receives no New Zealand protection, and the brand is included for reference because New Zealand readers meet it.

The same criteria apply to TAB and Betcha. They are not rivals. They are two front doors on the same operator, and the comparison lays them side by side so a reader can see which one suits a particular way of punting.

At a glance: the brands reviewed

A column useful in another table is empty here for most rows and dropped. The marketing claim that some offshore brand is “100% legal” or “fully licensed” appears in promotional materials and does not survive contact with the DIA’s statement; the column for it are dashes down the page.

Two TAB NZ brands, one operator

TAB

TAB is the flagship online face of TAB NZ. It runs fixed-odds racing and sports betting, the tote product set described above, and a Same Game Multi builder across racing and sports where the underlying legs allow. The app exposes deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion in the safer-gambling menu, and an exclusion applies to Betcha at the same time. The Helpline number 0800 654 655 and the text line 8006 sit inside the help section. The product suite feels like a long-standing Australian-style TAB product adapted to the New Zealand calendar — Melbourne Cup coverage on the racing side, Super Rugby Pacific and NRL on the sports side, All Blacks test matches through the year.

The cooperative feature inside TAB NZ is the long-running Entain partnership. Entain runs the TAB NZ business under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023 and shares gross profits with TAB NZ on a 50/50 basis, with at least NZ$150m a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years, plus a one-off NZ$100m Entain payment to the racing sector. The arrangement funnels new investment into product and technology on TAB’s side; it does not change the legal monopoly. The reader’s experience is TAB NZ’s terms, Entain’s product engineering.

For the reader who wants the standard TAB NZ experience — the full racing and sports menu, the pool products, the safer-gambling controls at point of access, and the regulator’s eye on the brand — TAB is the front door. There is no second operator to compare with, which is the point of the law, not a gap in the review.

Betcha

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB NZ. It sits on the same TAB NZ account, the same fixed-odds engine and the same tote product set. It targets a different style of punter: a cleaner interface, single-event navigation, the same market depth underneath but less of the racing-codes depth a serious racing punter sees in the TAB product. Betcha’s accounts share the TAB NZ identity and verification layer — a New Zealand ID and address, an 18+ confirmation, and the same exclusion regime, so a self-exclusion flows across both brands in one step.

For the reader who likes the TAB NZ product palette but wants a leaner interface and a friendlier first-time flow, Betcha is the front door. For the reader who likes the multi-code and pool depth, TAB is the front door. There is no product difference large enough to split a decision on it; the difference is the fit. One operator, two front doors.

Brands New Zealand readers meet, and the cost of using them

The remaining eight brands in the review are not lawful for New Zealand betting. They are included because a reader looking for “legal betting in New Zealand” meets them in search results and affiliate marketing, and they deserve an honest description in the article language. None of them holds a licence to take racing or sports bets from people in New Zealand.

FunBet

FunBet is the Soft2Bet group’s sportsbook front end. The home page advertises odds on football, ice hockey, American football, basketball, volleyball, tennis, rugby and baseball, with live betting and a 24/7 framing. FunBet names no licence that applies in New Zealand. Verification, age enforcement and New Zealand consumer protections are not established. The cashier page lists payment methods the operator accepts in other jurisdictions; New Zealand players will not find a New Zealand complaints route or a harm-minimisation framework that the regulator reads against TAB NZ.

A reader who chooses FunBet bets on a brand that the Department of Internal Affairs says is breaking New Zealand law by serving this reader, and the reader trades away every New Zealand protection for it.

Rabona

Rabona launched on 23 December 2019 as the sixth online sportsbook in the Soft2Bet group, sitting beside FunBet in the same product family. The group’s Curaçao licence applies on the operator side and gives no right to take bets from people in New Zealand. The product set is broad — sportsbook, casino, virtuals, live — and a New Zealand punter sees a familiar surface, but the law puts the liability on the operator serving New Zealand, not on the punter. The reader’s protection gap is the same as for FunBet.

RTbet

RTbet’s home page lists football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football and baseball, with live betting and virtual sports alongside the main sportsbook. The Curaçao licence the operator cites does not reach New Zealand. New Zealand protections and complaints routes are not established. For a punter who finds an RTbet welcome promotion attractive, the maths is the same as every offshore brand: the duty payable under New Zealand’s online gambling duty on offshore operators, payable by the operator, is a tax not a licence, and does not authorise the offer. The punter pays no duty, but the punter gets no New Zealand protection.

Sportaza

Sportaza’s terms cite an Anjouan licence (No. ALSI-202606064-FI2) under section 1.4 and reference a Tobique licence (No. 0000067). Neither licence authorises taking bets from people in New Zealand under section 74AAA. The product set is broad and the cashier carries a familiar list of accepted methods. A New Zealand punter using Sportaza trades away New Zealand protection for whatever extra the brand offers over TAB NZ; that is the trade the page names plainly.

Rooster.bet

Rooster.bet operates under e-gaming licence No. 0000002 from the Tobique Gaming Commission, holder Novatrix SRL, a Costa Rica company with registration number 3-102-893958. Tobique’s licence gives no right to take bets from people in New Zealand. The Tobique framework is lightweight by comparison with the Gambling Commission of Great Britain or the Malta Gaming Authority, and a New Zealand punter who hits a dispute has no New Zealand complaints route.

RoyalistPlay

RoyalistPlay is owned by the same Novatrix SRL Costa Rica entity (registration number 3-102-893958) and operates under the same Tobique e-gaming licence (No. 0000002). The product set overlaps significantly with Rooster.bet, which is unsurprising given the common ownership. A reader using RoyalistPlay trades away the same New Zealand protection as with any other offshore brand.

Winz.io

Winz.io’s footer states the brand operates under Anjouan and Tobique licences. The accepted-asset model — a crypto-led cashier with fiat on the side — is what a player meets at Winz.io; a reader who wants to bet with Bitcoin, Ether or stablecoins and finds the cashier environment familiar elsewhere. None of that changes the New Zealand picture: section 74AAA still says no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand. The accepted-asset model does not legalise the offer, and the crypto angle does not lift the prohibition.

Spinbara

Spinbara’s English home page advertises a sports welcome bonus of 100% up to 200 USDT and a casino welcome bonus of 100% up to EUR 500 plus 200 free spins. The operator names no licence that applies in New Zealand. The casino welcome promotion runs alongside a sports welcome promotion, and a reader’s instinct is to treat both as a value bet; the maths of bookmaker margins does not change with a promotion, and the licence question does not change with a bonus.

What the maths of one bet looks like

A betting guide is more useful when it shows the maths in passing, so the next passage walks through one expected-cost scenario and what it tells a reader about New Zealand’s domestic setup.

The inputs for the worked example: a turnover of NZ$500 staked once across a hypothetical two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 / 1.90. The prices are illustrative; New Zealand has no public wholesale odds feed for sport, and TAB NZ publishes its own book on each event. A two-way 1.90 / 1.90 line is what a sharp-looking bookmaker posts on something close to a coin-flip event; the 5.13% margin that sits inside those prices is the kind a serious operator carries on a market with no obvious favourite. There is no quoted price to print because no published snapshot is on file; the prices are examples, not data.

The arithmetic. On a market at 1.90 / 1.90, the payout share per dollar staked is 1 / (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = 1 / (0.5263 + 0.5263) = 1 / 1.0526 ≈ 95.0%. The bookmaker keeps 1 − 0.950 = 5.0% on every dollar bet, before any in-app promotion. At NZ$500 staked once, the expected cost clears at NZ$500 × 5.0% = NZ$25, with the rest, NZ$475, returning to the population of bettors in the long run. The result is a band, not a point: the expected cost of a bet slips as low as zero on one bet and as high as NZ$500 on the other, depending on outcome. Over a large number of similar bets at the same prices, the average settles at NZ$25 lost per NZ$500 wagered. That is the cost the maths hands back; the figure is a long-run average and not what any one punter pays.

The point that survives the arithmetic is the simple one. The margin sits inside every price TAB NZ posts, every price Betcha posts, and every price any offshore brand posts, because the same arithmetic applies to every bookmaker’s book. A promotion can soften a margin in the short run, but the underlying margin is structural: it is how a bookmaker pays for the staff, the product and the dividend. A reader who understands this stops looking for “high odds” and starts looking for markets where the punter has an information edge — which, on most events and most markets, is rare.

The same expected-cost ceiling applies offshore. An offshore brand posting 1.90 / 1.90 carries roughly the same 5.0% margin it carries on any two-way line. The reader’s expected cost of staking NZ$500 once at offshore prices is roughly NZ$25, give or take a tick of margin. The arithmetic is the same; the licence situation is what makes the comparison worth taking seriously for the reader.

How an offer really costs the punter, in plain English

Most betting offers in the New Zealand market and offshore are written as free bets, deposit bonuses or boosted odds. The maths is uniform: an offer carries a wagering multiple, a minimum price, a deadline and a cap on free-bet winnings, and each of those restricts how much of the headline value the punter actually keeps.

The headline free bet looks like a NZ$50 free bet. The wagering multiple, if any, decides whether the NZ$50 has to be turned over a stated number of times at named minimum prices before a withdrawal. The minimum price decides how much of an edge the punter keeps when the wagering bet lands. The cap on free-bet winnings, when one applies, flattens the upside on a long-odds winner. The reader’s actual realised value is most often well below the headline figure, and a sharp reading of the terms gives a punter the same arithmetic a calculator does.

The deposit bonus looks like a 100% match up to NZ$200. The wagering multiple is usually heavier than the headline free bet; the typical structure requires turning over the deposit plus the bonus at minimum prices before withdrawal is permitted. A heavy multiple, a low minimum price and a short deadline together produce a poor offer regardless of the headline number.

The boosted odds offer often runs as “odds boosted to NZ$10” on a named selection. The catch is two-fold: the boost is on a single bet, not a multi, and a maximum stake limit of NZ$20 or NZ$50 caps the upside. The reader who treats the boost as a coupon for serious money is treating it as a coupon for small money.

A punter looking at any of these offers benefits from computing realised value before the bet is placed. A reader who is not comfortable running the maths can treat the offer as recreation with a small cost, not as value.

The honesty the page closes on

New Zealand’s betting law is unusual. Most regulated markets name a regulator and a roster of licensed bookmakers a reader can compare. New Zealand names one operator, and that operator runs two brands. Every guide of this kind eventually lands on a recommendation, and a recommendation here is the same as the law: TAB or Betcha, pick the brand whose interface suits, set the harm-minimisation tools before the account is funded, and stop betting with offshore brands. The recommendation is not a marketing endorsement; it is the only lawful answer the regulator supports.

The trade the reader makes in going offshore is real, and the trade in going domestic is also real. The domestic option gives the regulator’s protection and the harm-minimisation framework, and it costs the reader whatever TAB NZ’s product does not carry compared to an offshore bookmaker. The offshore option gives the reader whatever the offshore bookmaker’s product does carry, and it costs the reader every New Zealand protection, the right to a New Zealand complaint, and the operator-law liability the regulator pursues.

A punter who decides the trade is worth it, whether the trade goes domestic or offshore, makes the decision in the open. The decision sits on the page; the law sits beside it.

Frequently asked questions

Are offshore betting sites legal for a New Zealand player?

No offshore betting site may lawfully offer racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force since 28 June 2025. The law targets the operator. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 says an individual may not be convicted for placing such a bet, and no published penalty for a player was found. The Department warns that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with weak consumer protections, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay large wins. The player trades away New Zealand protection by going offshore.

How is betting on horse racing legal?

Thoroughbred and harness racing continue in New Zealand under the Racing Industry Act 2020, and bets on those meetings are taken by TAB NZ — at fixed odds or through the tote. The standard product set (Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6) is offered through the TAB brand, with Betcha as the second TAB NZ front door. Greyhound racing closes from 1 August 2026, after which no New Zealand operator — TAB NZ included — may offer bets on New Zealand greyhound races because the product is gone.

Is any online sports betting legal in New Zealand?

Yes. TAB NZ, through TAB and Betcha, may lawfully offer online sports betting to people in New Zealand under section 74AAA. No other bookmaker may. A casino operator licensed under the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 is licensed for online casino only and does not extend to sports betting. Sports covered by TAB NZ include the major codes a New Zealand punter follows — rugby, cricket, league, basketball and the long international racing calendar.

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

TAB NZ, via its two online brands TAB and Betcha. The 28 June 2025 amendment created the monopoly. Entain runs the TAB business under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023, sharing gross profits 50/50 with TAB NZ and contributing at least NZ$150m a year to TAB NZ for the first five years, alongside a NZ$100m one-off payment to the racing sector. The arrangement changes the technology and product investment; it does not change the legal position.

Are TAB and Betcha two different bookmakers?

No. TAB and Betcha are the two online brands of TAB NZ. They share the same TAB NZ licence, the same verification and account infrastructure, and the same 18+ and self-exclusion regime. A self-exclusion at one brand excludes the person at both. The product interface and presentation differ; the operator, the regulator and the protections are the same.

Is a New Zealand player punished for betting with an overseas bookmaker?

No published penalty for a player was found. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA. The Department of Internal Affairs targets the operator and warns the player of the practical risks: overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with weak consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay large wins. The player loses the consumer-protection floor New Zealand offers through TAB NZ, and that is the practical consequence.

Prepared by the Nzinstantbanking editorial staff.