Betting with TAB NZ in 2026: one operator, two brands, and the rest of the market

Updated October 2026

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Available in US

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18+ Only

This page describes online sports and racing betting in New Zealand after the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 took effect on 28 June 2025. TAB NZ runs the only lawful online bookmaking operation in the country, and Betcha is its second online brand. Everything below is written from those terms, against that statute, and against the licences the offshore brands actually hold.

Currency as of 30 October 2026; bookmaker terms and licence claims checked against each operator’s own published pages and the Racing Industry Act 2020 (as amended).

Responsible gambling in a one-operator market

A market with one operator is also a market where every player protection tool runs through one app. The responsible-gambling section starts there because the tool you use is the tool that gets used.

TAB NZ publishes deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion inside the TAB app. An exclusion applies across both TAB NZ brands — TAB and Betcha — so closing one account closes the other. The app carries the free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and the text line 8006, and lists Safer Gambling Aotearoa as a referral. The helpline is the front door to counselling and to the self-exclusion process if the in-app route is not what a punter wants to use.

The age for betting with TAB NZ is 18. Betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020 — the law reads it as a hard line, not a gate that lifts at the till. Land-based casino entry in New Zealand is 20; the two rules belong to different operations under different permits, and the casino floor age is not a betting age.

The offshore brands in this guide take bets from adults but carry none of the New Zealand harm-minimisation framework. Their own terms set a minimum age (almost always 18 or over) and most run some form of self-exclusion, but neither the Gambling Helpline nor Safer Gambling Aotearoa reaches them. If a player needs New Zealand counselling, the helpline does not route back into the offshore brand’s account. The Department of Internal Affairs warns that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins.

Two cautions that recur later on this page sit better here than scattered through it. First, a deposit limit set inside the TAB app is a real limit, with the operator honouring it. A limit set inside an offshore account runs only as far as the offshore operator’s own enforcement. Second, the exclusion register the new online casino law creates is a casino register, not a betting register. A punt self-excluding from TAB closes both NZ brands; a punt wanting exclusion from offshore betting has to ask each brand separately.

Bonus bets and what they actually cost a TAB customer

TAB NZ runs “bonus bets” promotions. The word is the same one a hundred offshore brands use, and the arithmetic is not. Three numbers decide what a bonus bet is worth: how the bet pays out, what you must turn over before you can withdraw, and the minimum odds on the qualifying wager.

A bonus bet at TAB NZ functions like a free bet whose stake is not returned with a win. If a NZ$10 bonus bet wins at odds of 3.00, the account is credited with NZ$20 in winnings — the NZ$10 stake is gone. A real cash stake of NZ$10 at the same odds returns NZ$30 (stake plus profit). The difference is the cost of the bonus itself.

Turnover is the part readers skip. TAB NZ bonus bet promotions carry a wagering requirement — the bonus amount must be turned over a set number of times at minimum odds before any winnings become withdrawable. Read the promotion terms before claiming: the wagering factor, the minimum odds, the deadline and the markets that count are written there. A “wager once at minimum odds 1.50” is a light ask. A “wager five times at minimum odds 3.00” is a heavy one, and it eats the value of the bonus long before it ends.

Three things most readers miss. Minimum odds matter because a winning bet at 1.20 counts toward turnover but produces almost no value, so the requirement is met on paper while the bonus is paid for in lost margin. Deadlines matter because a promotion that expires mid-weekend is one you meet under time pressure. Market restrictions matter because some promotions count only bets on certain sports or bet types, and a multi with one excluded leg does not count.

The market’s own costs run underneath the promotion. TAB NZ’s odds carry the bookmaker’s margin, and the margin runs against every wager, bonus or not. A bonus bet with a six-times wagering requirement is six wagers through a market that has already priced in its cut. The expected cost of clearing the bonus is the turnover multiplied by the market’s margin, and it comes out of the bonus’s value before the punter sees a dollar. The arithmetic section further down walks through a worked example using an illustrative two-way market.

Offshore brands in this guide carry welcome offers of their own — percentage matches, free spin bundles, free bets and similar structures. Read each offer’s terms in the same way. The rule that does not change between a New Zealand lawful bonus bet and a Curaçao welcome bonus is the rule the offer has to be turned over before withdrawal — and the offer that costs the least is the one with the smallest turnover requirement at the smallest minimum odds over the fewest markets.

The TAB NZ app, the phone betting line and what each does well

TAB NZ’s mobile offering runs through the “TAB – Racing & Sports Betting” app, first published in the New Zealand App Store on 8 September 2014 and sold under the name New Zealand Racing Board. The app carries a 17+ age rating while the operator’s own terms state that customers must be 18 or over to bet — the rating is the App Store’s, the betting age is the law’s. The app covers horse and harness racing, rugby union and rugby league, and a wider sports menu, with pre-match and live markets.

A punter choosing between the app and the older phone-betting line is choosing between two interfaces to the same account. The phone line keeps the operation accessible to people without a smartphone or with limited data, and it carries the same markets and the same odds as the digital channels. For someone who has bet with TAB for decades, the phone is the path of least change. For someone whose weekly bet is a Same Game Multi on the Warriors, the app is faster.

The app’s safer-gambling controls live inside it: deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. The phone line links through to the same account-level controls but the act of setting them sits on the website or the app. Punters using the phone line as their primary channel still set their limits online.

Betcha runs as a separate app and website under the TAB NZ group, and an account opened on one brand is usable on the other for login, balance and bet history. The brands are styled differently and target different use cases; the back-end operation is one.

Live betting and cash out at TAB NZ

TAB NZ’s published menu lists live betting in its app, with prices updating as the event runs. The product is a standard in-play book: markets suspend at key moments — a try, a goal, a six — and resume with a new price once the dust settles. The exact list of in-play sports and the depth of the market on each are in the app, and they change event by event.

Cash out is the reader’s escape hatch when placing a live bet. A punter who took the Warriors at 2.40 before kick-off can close the bet early at a price set by the operator while the score is, say, 12-6. The cash-out figure is calculated from current live odds and the stake; it is almost always worse than holding the bet to settlement, and it is what a punter takes when the picture has changed in a way the original bet did not anticipate.

Two things the live product does not do. Live betting does not give the punter a price the operator has not already priced: the margin sits inside every in-play quote just as it sits inside the pre-match quote. Cash out does not give the punter a fair exit: the cash-out price carries the operator’s cut, and the size of that cut is in the terms the punter has agreed to by using the product.

Offshore brands in this guide carry live betting of varying depth, and some run partial or full cash out. The match-by-match depth and the markets suspended at race conditions are operator-specific, and a punter planning to bet in-play on a specific league or competition is advised to check the operator’s live page before opening the account.

Predictions, tips and what the punter actually controls

Search traffic for “TAB best bets today” and “TAB betting tips” lands here because people want someone else to do the reading. The honest answer is that no model, tipster or preview page knows an outcome it has not yet been played. Anyone selling a “sure thing” is selling something that does not exist, and a punter who bets the bank on it is paying for the lesson.

What the punter controls is the discipline around the bet. Three rules work.

First, a staking plan. A punter who decides in advance that each wager is one unit of a fixed bankroll — say, two per cent of the monthly betting fund — survives a bad week. A punter who chases losses by doubling up after a loser is the punter the bookmaker’s margin is built to collect.

Second, a price discipline. A bet only at minimum odds 1.50 is not a low-stakes bet, it is a bet against a market that has priced its cut into the short end. The bet at odds 2.50+ that hits a third of the time is a better long-run trade than the bet at odds 1.20 that hits ninety per cent of the time.

Third, a market discipline. Some markets — soccer match result, rugby league handicap — are priced efficiently because the betting public watches them. Other markets — player props on a mid-table domestic fixture — carry wider margins because the operator has less competition on the price. A punter who specialises in the second kind of market is the punter who finds the bookmaker’s edge most often.

The page does not publish tips and does not carry predictions. The arithmetic section gives a worked example of what a two-way price at 1.90 / 1.90 costs a monthly budget of NZ$500 — and the answer is that the bookmaker keeps roughly five per cent of every dollar staked, on average, regardless of who wins.

Bet types, odds and the betting calculator

The TAB NZ bet menu covers fixed-odds singles and multis, tote (pool) bets on racing, and a Same Game Multi product for sports. Fixed odds is the standard bookmaker bet: a price is offered, the punter takes it or leaves it, and the bet pays the stake times the odds if it wins. Tote is the pool bet: the operator takes a commission out of the pool and pays the rest pro rata to winning tickets. Same Game Multi (SGM) is a multi whose legs all come from one event — most often a rugby or football match — with the legs multiplying into one price.

Racing bet types at TAB NZ carry their own names and their own staking rules. Win pays on the horse that finishes first. Place pays on horses that finish in the top two, three or four depending on field size. Each Way is a win bet plus a place bet of equal stake. Quinella picks the first two in any order. Exacta picks the first two in order. Trifecta picks the first three in order. First4 picks the first four in order. Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6 are multi-race bets — each leg is a different race, and the prices multiply into one ticket.

The bet calculator on the TAB NZ site takes a stake and a set of odds and returns the payout if every leg wins. For a fixed-odds single at odds 2.10 with a stake of NZ$10, the calculator returns NZ$21. For a three-leg multi with odds 2.10, 3.00 and 1.80, the calculator multiplies the odds into a single price (2.10 × 3.00 × 1.80 = 11.34) and pays NZ$10 × 11.34 = NZ$113.40 if all three legs win.

The arithmetic the calculator hides is the margin. A bookmaker’s margin on a single market is calculated from the prices on every outcome. For a two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 and 1.90, the payout share is 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = 0.95 — the market pays out 95 cents on the dollar in the long run, and the bookmaker keeps 5 cents on the dollar as margin. The punter’s expected loss on a NZ$500 turnover staked once across this market is NZ$500 × 5% = NZ$25, before any bonus, free bet or promotion is layered on top.

A multi bet increases the number of outcomes that must all win, and it multiplies the odds of each leg into one price. The expected cost rises in proportion. A two-leg multi at 2.00 and 2.00 pays 4.00 if both win; the margin on each leg stacks into a bigger combined margin on the multi than on either leg alone. The bet is fun, the price is bigger, and the bookmaker’s edge is bigger too.

Sports and tournaments on the TAB NZ card

The TAB NZ racing menu covers thoroughbred, harness (trots) and greyhound racing. Thoroughbred and harness are the two codes that drive the bulk of the betting volume, and the Melbourne Cup in early November is the single largest betting event on the Australian and New Zealand racing calendar — TAB NZ runs full fixed-odds and pool markets on it, and the spring carnival around it fills the weeks before and after. Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date the offshore operators in this guide may not take bets on greyhound races either.

The TAB NZ sports menu carries rugby union — Super Rugby Pacific, All Blacks test matches, the international calendar — and rugby league, with the NRL the largest single competition by betting volume through the Australian winter. AFL sits alongside the rugby codes as the other winter sport, with the AFL season running March through September. Cricket carries the Black Caps’ international schedule, the domestic Super Smash and the Indian Premier League. The wider menu includes football, basketball, tennis, American football, baseball, golf and others, with the depth of market varying event by event.

Offshore brands in this guide carry deeper menus on some sports — soccer player props, US basketball alternate lines, esports — than TAB NZ does, because their books were built for a global audience rather than the New Zealand one. The trade is depth for legality: TAB NZ’s book is the lawful book, and the depth it lacks on a given league is the price a New Zealand punter pays for the monopoly.

How betting works at TAB NZ from account to payout

Opening an account requires a verified New Zealand address and identification. The verification step sits between sign-up and first deposit; an unverified account can browse and watch but cannot place a bet. The age check is part of the same flow — the operator’s own terms state customers must be 18 or over.

Funding the account runs through the deposit menu in the app or on the website. The exact list of methods — debit card, bank transfer, prepaid card, POLi — is on TAB NZ’s deposit page; each method carries its own minimum and its own processing time. The app is the path most punters use, and the phone line takes a verbal deposit instruction from an account holder. No statutory rule on payment methods for betting was found; TAB NZ’s own deposit menu is the rule.

Placing a bet is the same flow on app and on the phone line. Pick the event, pick the market, pick the price, type the stake, confirm. A multi bet adds legs to the slip; the combined price multiplies on screen before the punter confirms. A Same Game Multi pulls legs from one event into the slip. The bet settles after the event — instantly for markets that resolve on a single result (Win, head-to-head), minutes later for markets that wait on a final standing (place, handicap, exact-score).

Withdrawal runs through the same account the deposit used. Processing time depends on the method; bank transfer is the standard, and the operator’s payout page gives the current time. The offshore brands in this guide carry their own payout pages and their own rules on first-withdrawal verification. New Zealand harm-minimisation protections do not apply to the offshore payout — the operator’s own terms are what run.

Two things make a withdrawal stall. The first is bonus turnover: a punter who has not met the wagering requirement on an active bonus cannot withdraw the bonus-derived balance. The second is identity verification: the first withdrawal from an offshore account often triggers a request for documents the operator did not need at deposit. The verification request is not the operator being awkward — it is the operator meeting its own anti-money-laundering obligations — but it is the place where a payout slows.

Top operators comparison

The operators below are ordered as research sets it, with TAB and Betcha first because they are the only lawful options in New Zealand since 28 June 2025. The offshore brands follow because New Zealand players meet them, with each rated “not licensed in New Zealand” so the status is on the record beside every entry.

The table’s third column is the part a reader has to read. Each entry names what the operator’s own terms or footer state, with no rephrasing of the operator’s position into something softer. The first two rows are the lawful options in New Zealand; the rest are not, and the same status note sits beside each one.

TAB

TAB is the brand that has been the New Zealand bookmaker for decades. Since 28 June 2025 it has been the lawful online bookmaker as well as the retail and phone-betting operation. The Racing Industry Act 2020, as amended by the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025, gives TAB NZ the exclusive right to take racing and sports bets from people in New Zealand, and the Department of Internal Affairs told unlicensed providers to withdraw with immediate effect on that date.

The current operation runs with Entain under a 25-year partnership signed in 2023. Entain runs the day-to-day, takes a 50/50 share of gross profits, and has committed at least NZ$150m a year to TAB NZ for the first five years alongside a one-off NZ$100m payment to the racing sector. The deal is what pays for the technology rebuild, the app and the platform that Betcha runs on too.

The product covers horse and harness racing, rugby union and league, cricket, AFL, football and a wider sports menu, with fixed-odds, tote (pool), Multi, Same Game Multi and live markets. The safer-gambling tools — deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, the helpline and Safer Gambling Aotearoa — sit inside the app, and the exclusion applies across both TAB NZ brands. The age for betting is 18, and account opening needs a verified New Zealand address.

For a New Zealand punter the appeal of TAB is straightforward: it is the only place to bet lawfully online, the safer-gambling tools reach the account, the operator pays the Problem Gambling Levy, and the regulator (the Department of Internal Affairs) is one a punt can name. The cost is depth — the offshore brands carry markets TAB does not, and the punter who wants those markets has to leave the lawful option to find them.

Betcha

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB NZ, built alongside the TAB brand on the same Entain-operated platform. The two brands share the same market access under section 74AAA, the same player-protection framework, and the same back-office; the difference is presentation and the audience each targets. Betcha is the brand the partnership with Entain built as a digital-first product, while TAB carries the retail and phone-betting operation as well.

A punt with an account on one brand can use the account on the other for login and balance. A self-exclusion on TAB closes Betcha as well. The arrangement means Betcha is not a rival bookmaker to TAB, it is the second face of the same operation.

For a New Zealand punter the appeal of Betcha is the same as the appeal of TAB — the lawful monopoly — plus a digital-first experience built for a punt who lives on the app. The trade-off is the same: the offshore brands carry markets Betcha does not, and the brand is no wider in its menu than the TAB brand it shares a platform with.

LegendPlay

LegendPlay is an offshore sportsbook and casino with an Anjouan Gaming Authority licence. The licence gives no right to take bets from people in New Zealand, and the Department of Internal Affairs told unlicensed providers to withdraw with immediate effect on 28 June 2025. The brand accepts customers aged 18 or over only.

The book carries a sports menu with the standard sports — football, tennis, basketball, ice hockey — and a casino lobby underneath. Safer-gambling tools are the operator’s own: deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, all set inside the account. The Gambling Helpline and Safer Gambling Aotearoa do not reach the brand.

The appeal for a New Zealand punter is the menu depth on some sports and the welcome offer described on the operator’s own page. The trade is legality: the brand is breaking New Zealand law by serving a New Zealand resident under section 74AAA, no New Zealand regulator oversees the account, and the New Zealand complaints framework does not reach a dispute. The expected cost in protection is the price of the depth.

OLNY offshore brands — Sportaza, Telbet, Alawin, RTbet, Golden Panda, RoyalistPlay, Rabona

The seven offshore brands in the table above share a status and a shape. They are not licensed in New Zealand; the licences they name — Anjouan, Tobique, Curaçao, Costa Rica — give no right to take bets from people in New Zealand. They accept customers aged 18 or over only. They carry safer-gambling tools of their own, and the New Zealand Gambling Helpline does not reach any of them.

The menu differences matter. RTbet covers football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football and baseball with live betting and virtual sports. Golden Panda adds esports and prediction markets to its sportsbook. Sportaza runs two licence numbers (Anjouan and Tobique) and a wider casino lobby. RoyalistPlay is operated by Novatrix SRL out of Costa Rica. Telbet describes itself as a crypto casino and sportsbook with a Russian-language welcome offer. Alawin sets an 18+ age floor with no further licence detail. Rabona launched in 2019 as the sixth sportsbook of the Soft2Bet group.

For a New Zealand punter each brand’s appeal is the menu depth on the sport the punter follows, and the welcome offer the brand runs. The trade, on every brand, is that the Department of Internal Affairs reads the offer as unlawful for the operator to make to a New Zealand resident, the New Zealand harm-minimisation framework does not reach the account, and a dispute sits in whichever jurisdiction the licence names.

The New Zealand punter who wants one of these books has to decide whether the menu depth is worth stepping outside the monopoly for. The honest framing is that the legal status is on TAB NZ’s side and the depth is on the offshore side, and the punter pays for the depth in the protection the offshore side does not offer.

Worked example: what a NZ$500 month at 1.90/1.90 costs

The arithmetic belongs to the punter, not the page. The number below is an illustration of how a bookmaker’s margin translates into an expected cost, using inputs that match this guide’s subject and the New Zealand market a TAB customer faces. It is not a prediction of what any specific punter will lose.

The scenario is a monthly betting budget of NZ$500, staked once across a two-way market at decimal odds 1.90 and 1.90 — an even-money line on, for example, a rugby league head-to-head or a tennis match winner. The odds are illustrative, not a quoted TAB NZ price on a specific event.

Step one is the payout share. For a two-way market with two outcomes both priced at 1.90, the formula is the inverse of the sum of the reciprocals of the prices: payout share = 1 ÷ (1/1.90 + 1/1.90) = 1 ÷ (0.5263 + 0.5263) = 1 ÷ 1.0526 = 0.95. The market pays out 95 cents on the dollar across many bets at these prices, and the bookmaker keeps 5 cents on the dollar as margin.

Step two is the expected cost. Expected cost = turnover × margin = NZ$500 × 5% = NZ$25. That is the average cost a punter at this price pays to the bookmaker’s margin over a month of betting, before the result of any individual bet is known.

Step three is the same calculation as a band rather than a single number, because a real month is not a clean average. The punter might end the month ahead, at break-even, or behind, depending on the results. The expected cost is the average around which the actual outcomes scatter, and the band the punter is advised to plan for is something like NZ$0 to NZ$50 in either direction — with NZ$25 as the centre of the band.

Step four is what changes the band. A promotion such as a bonus bet shifts the centre, because the bonus pays out at the price without charging the stake back, and the wagering requirement sits on top of the bet. A multi bet widens the band, because each leg adds a margin and the combined margin is larger than any single leg’s margin. A specialist market narrows the band on the punter’s side if the punter prices the market better than the bookmaker does, but the book’s margin is still inside every quote.

Step five is what the punter is advised to carry away. The bookmaker’s margin is the price of admission to every bet, and the price is roughly five per cent on a two-way market at even-money prices. A NZ$500 monthly budget at this margin gives an expected cost of NZ$25, and the punter who wants to do better than the expected cost has to beat the margin on enough bets to come out ahead — a tall order on a market priced by a bookmaker with the data the bookmaker has.

Overview: what the New Zealand market looks like in 2026

The New Zealand online sports and racing market in 2026 has one operator group, two online brands, and a longer list of offshore brands that New Zealand punters reach without a regulator’s permission. TAB NZ is the lawful operator, TAB is the long-standing brand with retail and phone-betting infrastructure, and Betcha is the digital-first sibling running on the same Entain-operated platform. The Racing Industry Act 2020, as amended in 2025, gives TAB NZ the monopoly.

The structure of the page so far has walked through the responsible-gambling tools that one-operator markets need, the bonus bets the operator runs, the app and phone line that carry the operation, the live betting and cash-out features, the bet types and odds on the card, the major sports and tournaments on the calendar, the mechanics of placing a bet and getting paid, the top operators compared on their own terms, and the worked example of what a margin costs. What follows is the legal frame those clauses sit inside.

The frame is short. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 prohibits anyone other than TAB NZ from offering racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, with effect from 28 June 2025. See the previous section for the DIA’s withdrawal order. 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. New Zealand does not geo-block bookmaker sites, and a New Zealand resident who reaches an offshore brand does so without a regulator looking over the brand’s shoulder.

The greyhound code is closing from 1 August 2026, and offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races from that date either. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 licences online casino gambling only and does not extend the betting monopoly. The problem gambling levy TAB NZ pays is 0.74%, in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028, and it funds harm-minimisation work. Inland Revenue guidance says recreational gambling winnings are not taxable and TAB racing prize money is not taxable; a person who bets as a business is a different case.

For a New Zealand punter the market in 2026 comes down to three points. One: TAB NZ and Betcha are the only lawful options, with the safer-gambling framework, the regulator and the levy behind them. Two: the offshore brands are unlawful for the operator to serve a New Zealand resident, and they are outside the New Zealand framework on every protection the framework offers. Three: no published penalty exists for the player, and the law targets the operator — which is the reason the offshore brands keep operating and the reason the New Zealand punter meets them.

Legality and regulation in detail

The Racing Industry Act 2020 establishes TAB NZ as the racing and sports betting provider for the country. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA, which closes the door on every other operator offering racing or sports bets to a person in New Zealand regardless of where the operator is incorporated or where the player is resident. The Department of Internal Affairs enforces compliance with the prohibition under section 92A of the same Act, and DIA told providers serving New Zealand residents to withdraw with immediate effect on 28 June 2025.

There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is only one lawful provider. A second licence cannot be applied for because the law does not allow a second licence to be granted. The Gambling Commission and the Department of Internal Affairs are the bodies a punter can name; the department oversees TAB NZ and enforces the prohibition.

The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 is a separate statute that licenses online casino gambling only. TAB New Zealand winning the right to apply for a casino licence under the 2026 act does not extend the betting monopoly or open the betting market to a second operator. The casino and the betting monopoly are separate regimes with separate rules.

The player-protection framework for betting runs through TAB NZ’s own controls — deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion — plus the gambling helpline, Safer Gambling Aotearoa and the Problem Gambling Levy. The exclusion register the 2026 online casino act creates is for casinos only; there is no single national online-betting exclusion register, and a punt self-excluding from TAB closes both NZ brands rather than a single brand.

The tax frame for a recreational gambler is light. Inland Revenue guidance treats recreational gambling winnings as not taxable, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A person who bets as a business — a professional punter, a trade — is a different case and needs professional advice. The operator side is different: TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy (0.74%) and overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay an online gambling duty (12% of profits from 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027). A duty being payable does not make an offer lawful; an offshore brand paying duty in another jurisdiction is still breaking New Zealand law by serving a New Zealand resident.

The advertising frame is the Advertising Standards Authority’s Gambling Advertising Code, which applies to betting advertisements. Ads must not target children (under 14) or young people (14 to under 18), must not encourage harm, and must be truthful with terms available. The “significant audience” threshold in the code is 25% — where accurate data exists, an audience 25% or more of which is under 25 is treated as significant. No New Zealand equivalent of a “whistle-to-whistle” ban for betting was found. TAB NZ runs “bonus bets” promotions; no New Zealand rule on bonus size or wagering terms was found, so the wagering terms sit in TAB NZ’s own promotion pages and not in statute.

The frame for the player is the last word, because it is what a New Zealand punter actually weighs. 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, and no source states a penalty for the player. The Department of Internal Affairs warns that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay out large wins. New Zealand does not block bookmaker sites, so the punter reaches the offshore book without the regulator’s permission and without the regulator’s protection.

Frequently asked questions

How do bonus bets work at TAB NZ?

A bonus bet at TAB NZ is a promotion credit that pays winnings only — the stake is not returned with a win. A NZ$10 bonus bet at odds 3.00 credits NZ$20 in winnings if it wins, not NZ$30. Bonus bet promotions carry a wagering requirement: the bonus amount must be turned over a set number of times at minimum odds before the winnings become withdrawable. The wagering factor, the minimum odds, the deadline and the eligible markets are in the promotion terms; read them before claiming. The expected cost of clearing the bonus is the turnover multiplied by the market’s margin.

How do I place a bet through my TAB account?

Open the TAB app or the TAB website, sign in, and pick the event you want to bet on. Select the market — Win, Place, head-to-head, handicap — and the price you want to take. Type the stake into the bet slip and confirm. A multi bet adds legs to the slip with the combined price multiplying on screen. A Same Game Multi pulls legs from one event. The bet settles after the event — instantly for single-result markets, shortly after for markets that wait on the final standing.

How do I use a bonus bet on the TAB app?

Open the TAB app, pick the event and market, and add the selection to the bet slip. Tick the “Use bonus bet” option (or select the bonus bet balance as the stake source) and confirm. The bet settles as a bonus bet, with the stake not returned on a win. The wagering requirement on the bonus runs separately from the bet itself, and the terms tell you how many times the bonus must be turned over at minimum odds before any winnings become withdrawable.

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

TAB NZ is the only lawful provider, and TAB and Betcha are the two online brands. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 (inserted by the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025, in force from 28 June 2025) prohibits anyone else from offering racing or sports bets to a person in New Zealand. There is no licence register for bookmakers because there is only one lawful operator, and no second licence can be applied for. The Department of Internal Affairs ordered an immediate withdrawal by unlicensed providers on that date.

Are TAB and Betcha two different bookmakers?

No — they are the two online brands of TAB NZ, run on the same Entain-operated platform with the same market access, the same player-protection framework, and the same back-office. An account opened on one brand is usable on the other for login and balance, and a self-exclusion on one brand closes the other. The brands are styled differently and target different audiences; they are not rivals, and the page does not compare them against each other.

Written by the editors at Kiwimobilebetting.