New Zealand One Step Closer to a Regulated Online Gambling Market
By Filip Colovic, Last updated Jul 9, 2025
On June 30th, 2025, New Zealand legislators introduced the Online Casino Gambling Bill to the House of Representatives, bringing the country one step closer to creating a regulated market for online gambling.
The New Zealand government plans to issue a total of 15 licenses to the highest bidders, and these will be issued for a period of 3 years. The operators will be picked through a competitive process, and major brands such as bet365, 888, and SkyCity have already expressed their interest.
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Brooke van Velden, said the regulations will prioritize harm minimization, consumer protection, and tax collection.
In terms of player protection, operators will be required to:
- Verify player age,
- Exclude problem gamblers,
- Establish a publicly available complaints process, and
- “Take all reasonable steps” to minimize potential harm.
It’s also worth noting that, only a few days before the Online Casino Gambling Bill was presented, the government amended the Racing Industry Act 2020 and made TAB NZ the only operator that can legally offer sports betting in New Zealand.
The plan is to establish a fully regulated market by early 2026, though no official timeline has been confirmed so far.
Filip is a seasoned writer and editor with over 8 years of experience working in a wide variety of niches, primarily in iGaming, gaming, and SaaS. He mainly plays blackjack and slots, with a soft spot for Spinomenal and Play’n GO. Apart from that, he enjoys grand strategy games, a good cup of coffee, and is an avid consumer of all genres of fiction, film, and music.
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