New Zealand is getting closer to a licensed online casino market. If you missed the news, you can catch up on everything that has happened via the link below.
The latest news regarding the licensed market is whether online casinos will be allowed to market themselves in the country.
Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden, who is responsible for reviewing the licensing of casinos from abroad, has stated that it is absolutely necessary for those with a valid license in the country to be allowed to advertise.
Otherwise, companies that have a license will wonder why they are there if they cannot be seen and reach their target audience.
At the moment, operators are prohibited from advertising in the country and will remain so until the new gambling regulations come into force. After that, only licensed casinos will be allowed to advertise.
Andree Froude worries about problem gambling
However, the Problem Gambling Foundation’s Andreee Froude worries that this is not so good and refers to the fact that it contributes to normalizing gambling.
It is also believed that people need to prepare themselves to be bombarded with advertisements even though only 15 companies will be granted a license.
Van Velden understands the concerns about these things but says that all marketing will be very carefully controlled and that the vast majority of advertisements will still be online where the casino’s largest target audience is.
Gold mine for operators with a license
In connection with the new regulation, there have been indications that it is overseas companies that will dominate because they are better equipped online.
Local companies such as Skycity and TAB have also expressed how unhappy they are with this decision and that it will harm their companies enormously as well as the New Zealand population.
This is because local companies currently give a lot of their profits back to the country. For example, they sponsor sports, charity and other projects in the country, while online casinos do not contribute in any way at all and will not have to do so.
It is estimated that New Zealand’s online gambling market generates at least NZ$304 million in revenue and has a turnover that reaches over NZ$3bn annually. This is larger than the horse racing industry and twice as large as Lotto.
And this is already the case when New Zealand does not have any gambling regulations in place, which clearly shows that online gambling is a big industry.
For those operators who manage to get a license in the country, it means that they get a very large piece of this pie and that they do not have to worry about 100s of other competitors.
In short, New Zealand will be a gold mine for the 15 casinos that get a license in 2026.
What will actually happen?
What we know will happen right now is that 15 companies will be allowed to hold a NZ license and this will come into effect on January 1, 2026. We still don’t know which 15 it will be, but we have made a list of big brands that we think could be some of those who will receive a license.
From here, New Zealand will begin a new era where for the first time in history, online gambling has been legalized. However, if you look at many other countries that have made a similar journey, you can also see that the day a new licensing system was introduced, the industry did not change exactly as expected. A common problem in many other countries is that many online casinos target markets where it is not legal to market without a license.
In some countries, statistics also show that players are increasingly seeking out casinos without the country’s license because it is believed that the license creates “bad casinos” that do not reward players like those outside the country do.
We don’t know what it will be like in New Zealand, of course, but the point is that everything probably won’t be perfect from day one. In Sweden, for example, they introduced their own licensing system in 2019 and to this day they haven’t managed to get players to stop looking to foreign gaming companies.
In other words, it will certainly take some time before the market is sorted out and obstacles will certainly appear. However, the goal will be to create a safer and more secure gaming market for players from New Zealand and this will be actively worked on regularly.