Betting in New Zealand: who is allowed to take your bet, and what every price is really costing you

Updated October 2026

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*Data current as of 31 October 2026 and checked against the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs register and TAB NZ’s published terms.*

A punter in New Zealand does not have a normal bookmaker choice. Since 28 June 2025, an amendment to the Racing Industry Act 2020 — section 74AAA — has named TAB NZ as the only provider lawfully allowed to take racing and sports bets from people in New Zealand. The brand a Kiwi punter meets on a search page is most often not that provider. Naming ten operators in a row and calling them New Zealand’s “top betting sites” is a fiction this guide refuses to write. What the page does instead is split the field the way the law splits it: TAB NZ and its online sister brand Betcha on one side, an offshore field that is not licensed in New Zealand on the other. Both groups are reviewed against the same criteria — sports coverage, in-play, app, payments, the offers on each brand’s own terms, and a verdict on who each one actually suits. The “top” in the title is taken literally: a shortlist of paths, not a ranking of equals.

How to read a forecast — the bettor’s first job

Every prediction in this market, whether it is dressed up as a tipster’s “banker of the day” or a model’s projected scoreline, has the same shape underneath. A tip is a statement that one outcome is more likely than the price suggests. The price is set by the bookmaker; the bookmaker keeps a margin on every market, so the price always already disagrees with the bettor before the bet is placed. Forecasting, in any useful sense, is the work of finding a price that pays more than the chance the bet carries. That is a harder task than picking a winner — most picks lose, and the few that win pay less than the bettor’s cumulative stake. A “top bet” is the bet whose price sits furthest above its true chance. There is no public list of those bets and no service can truthfully publish one; the page does not pretend otherwise.

What a tipster page can do is describe the moving parts. A forecast lives or dies on form, fixtures and price, in that order. Form is what the team has done lately, weighted by the quality of the opposition. Fixtures are the schedule that form will be tested against. Price is what the bookmaker is offering. Three real questions sit behind any tip:

• What is the probability the tip carries, on the best available evidence?
• What price is the bookmaker offering, and what margin sits inside it?
• Is the expected value of the bet — probability times the payout minus the probability of losing — positive?

When the answer to the third question is yes, the bet has a case. When the answer is no, even a winning tip is a long-term loser. The job of a forecast page is to teach the reader to ask those three questions, then to read every tip that comes their way through them.

The daily habit of a tipping work is short. Open the fixture list, build a shortlist of three or four matches, check team news, then read each market’s margin from the odds. A page that promises a winner a day is selling certainty the market does not have. The honest page is the one that names the framework and lets the reader use it.

Sports and tournaments the New Zealand punter follows

A shortlist of competitions New Zealand readers actually bet on, with the angle each one takes at the bookmaker:

• NRL top 8 betting. Rugby league is a winter code in New Zealand and the NRL carries the bulk of league interest, with the Warriors a regular focus. Top-eight markets open early and shift quickly on a long losing run.
• Premier League top scorer and top-four. Year-round markets that follow the Golden Boot race and the Champions League places, both of which settle on form and fixture difficulty.
• Super Rugby Pacific and All Blacks tests. The Southern Hemisphere international season overlaps with club rugby; long-term outright markets and match markets on Tests run hot from July through November.
• Melbourne Cup. A day that dwarfs most racing days in turnover. Win, place, quinella and exotic pools all carry their own margin, and exotic pools carry more of it.
• NRL player markets, NBA player props, NFL futures. Player markets are popular where the stats are public and the prices are competitive. NBA and NFL markets follow their own seasons.
• Cricket — Black Caps, IPL, The Ashes. Test match odds, series scores, top batsman and top wicket-taker all carry enough liquidity for serious play.
• UFC / MMA fight cards. Card-by-card pricing, method-of-victory markets and over/under rounds.
• Horse racing — thoroughbred, harness, greyhound. Thoroughbred and harness are year-round in New Zealand and Australia. Greyhound racing closes in New Zealand from 1 August 2026, after which TAB NZ no longer takes bets on the code and offshore operators may not take bets on New Zealand greyhound racing either.

Each of these carries its own pricing pattern. A 1X2 market on a Premier League match is a different margin from the top-four outright; a Same Game Multi on an NRL match is yet another margin again. Reading the margin first is the habit that prevents a punt from being a guess.

The shortlist: ten platforms reviewed against the same criteria

The table below lists the platforms this guide reviews. The first two are TAB NZ’s two online brands and are the only providers lawfully taking bets from people in New Zealand. The other eight are offshore brands licensed elsewhere; they are reviewed here because New Zealand players meet them, but none holds the right to take bets from people in New Zealand.

The two groups are not ranked against each other. TAB and Betcha are the lawful pair; the other eight are an offshore field reviewed against the same criteria so a reader can see what each one offers and what each one costs in New Zealand. None of the eight may lawfully take a bet from a person in New Zealand.

TAB

TAB is one of two online brands of TAB NZ and the only brand a Kiwi punter can lawfully bet with. TAB NZ holds the right under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020; the Department of Internal Affairs named TAB NZ and its sister brand Betcha as the only lawful providers once the amendment took effect on 28 June 2025. The partnership with Entain, signed in 2023, runs TAB NZ’s technology under a 25-year deal that gives Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits, with at least $150 million a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years and a one-off $100 million commitment to the racing sector.

The product covers horse and harness racing (greyhound closes from 1 August 2026), rugby union and rugby league, and other sports, with both pre-match and live markets. The app — published by New Zealand Racing Board and on the App Store since 2014 — bundles racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, Trackside live race streaming, and a simplified wallet. The 17+ App Store rating sits in a curious place beside the 18+ minimum age for placing bets; the App Store rating is a content guideline, the betting age is a statutory line.

What TAB NZ offers under “bonus bet” promotions is described in its own terms only — no New Zealand rule on bet-bonus size or wagering terms was published, so anything claimed is taken from TAB NZ’s own pages. The same is true of deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion: these are operator-level tools, listed in the app, and they apply across TAB and Betcha by design. The complaint route runs through TAB NZ and ultimately to the Department of Internal Affairs.

The verdict on TAB is straightforward: it is the only lawful option, and the only one that comes with New Zealand harm-minimisation tools and a regulator a New Zealand punter can reach. A punter who wants the lawful route bets with TAB.

Betcha

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB NZ. Like TAB, Betcha is one of two brands that may lawfully take online sports and racing bets from people in New Zealand since 28 June 2025. Betcha is not a rival to TAB; it is a sister brand of the same monopoly operator, run by Entain New Zealand Limited, first released on the New Zealand App Store on 6 August 2024.

The product covers horse, greyhound and harness racing, rugby, NRL, MMA/UFC, NBA, NFL, tennis, cricket, football, motorsports and esports. In-app betting is paired with Trackside live race streaming. Betcha targets a slightly different audience than TAB — a younger, app-first punter — but the regulatory position and the safer-gambling tools are the same. A self-exclusion set on Betcha applies on TAB and vice versa.

The verdict on Betcha is much the same as the verdict on TAB. The choice between the two is a product and aesthetic choice; the law treats them as one operator. A punter who likes a single-app racing-and-sports experience with live streams in the same window finds it at Betcha.

Alawin

Alawin is an offshore sportsbook without a New Zealand licence. Under the Racing Industry Act 2020, only TAB NZ may lawfully take racing and sports bets from a person in New Zealand; an offshore operator serving a New Zealand customer is on the wrong side of that law, whatever its own licence says. Alawin names no licence that applies in New Zealand, and there is no New Zealand complaints route or harm-minimisation framework that reaches it.

The sportsbook covers football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football and baseball, with Live Betting, Virtual Sports and esports alongside. A punter who already holds an Alawin account and is travelling outside New Zealand uses Alawin under Alawin’s own terms. A punter in New Zealand has no lawful path to Alawin and cannot expect a New Zealand complaint to be heard.

The verdict on Alawin for a New Zealand reader is that it is not for them, on the strict legal reading. The product is a reasonable mid-market sportsbook elsewhere; the price a New Zealand reader pays for using it is the loss of every New Zealand protection.

Rooster

Rooster is another offshore sportsbook without a New Zealand licence. Its licence of record is a Tobique Gaming Commission e-gaming licence (number 0000002), held by Novatrix SRL — a licence that gives no right to take bets from people in New Zealand. The site lists Live, Sports Promotions, Results, Schedule, E-sports and Predictions sections, and supports six odds formats.

A New Zealand reader who lands on Rooster through a search or a tipster link must read the page as they read any offshore brand: the operator may serve them, the product exists, the law does not. No New Zealand complaint route reaches Rooster, and no New Zealand harm-minimisation framework applies.

Rooster offers no New Zealand recourse and remains an offshore option for a punter.

Winz

Winz is an offshore sportsbook and casino without a New Zealand licence. Its own licence of record is Anjouan and Tobique, held by Novatrix SRL — neither of which gives a right to take bets from people in New Zealand. The site runs a sports betting promotion with its own Sportsbook Terms and Conditions, Sports Rules and Bonus Terms and Conditions pages.

For a New Zealand punter, the calculus is unchanged from the other offshore names in this list. The product is real, the law does not apply to New Zealand customers, and there is no New Zealand complaint route.

The verdict on Winz is the same shape: it is not for New Zealand readers, on a strict reading of section 74AAA.

BillyBets

BillyBets runs a casino and a sportsbook under one account. Its licence is not a New Zealand licence; the brand names no licence that applies in New Zealand, and the Department of Internal Affairs treats BillyBets as an offshore operator on the wrong side of section 74AAA if it served New Zealand customers.

The sportsbook is broad: football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football, baseball, combat sports, esports, virtual sports and live betting. The bonus side is busy — cashback and reload bonuses on sports, a coin shop where coins earned through depositing, betting, tournaments and challenges can be exchanged for free bets and free spins, and a five-level VIP programme.

The verdict on BillyBets is that a New Zealand reader must read it as an offshore brand. The product is broad and the bonus structure is layered; the price is the loss of every New Zealand protection.

Glorion

Glorion is an offshore sportsbook without a New Zealand licence. The site lists pre-match and live betting, virtual sports, horse racing and esports, with markets grouped into popular, niche, indoor and outdoor sports, plus entertainment events such as award shows and elections.

A New Zealand reader must treat Glorion as offshore. The breadth of markets is a feature for the jurisdictions it serves; it is not a feature a New Zealand punter can use lawfully.

The verdict on Glorion is unchanged from the rest of the offshore field: not for New Zealand readers on a strict legal reading.

Roobet

Roobet is an offshore sportsbook and casino with a Curaçao licence (OGL/2024/687/0427), held by Raw Entertainment B.V. The Curaçao licence is no use in New Zealand. Roobet covers soccer, basketball, tennis, Counter-Strike, FIFA, baseball, ice hockey, MMA and table tennis, and the terms require players to be 18 or older.

Roobet functions as an offshore entity, offering no New Zealand-specific protections.

Rabona

Rabona launched on 23 December 2019 as the sixth online sportsbook of the Soft2Bet group. The site is licensed in Curaçao, and Curaçao is not a New Zealand licence. The product is a Soft2Bet sportsbook template: similar services, variable terms.

Rabona operates similarly to other offshore sites: it is not licensed for the New Zealand market.

Millioner

Millioner is an offshore sportsbook without a New Zealand licence. Its product covers pre-match and live events on football, tennis, table tennis, basketball, ice hockey, American football and baseball, with separate Live Betting and Virtual Sports sections. No licence applies in New Zealand.

The verdict on Millioner is unchanged.

The fundamentals of the New Zealand market

The shape of the New Zealand market is set by one line of statute and one operator. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, inserted by the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 and in force since 28 June 2025, 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. The Department of Internal Affairs told unlicensed providers to withdraw with immediate effect. There is no licence to apply for and no licence register for bookmakers, because there is only one lawful provider.

Two brands sit under TAB NZ. TAB is the established name; Betcha is the app-first sister brand. They are one operator group. Both are powered by Entain under the partnership, and the long-term contract is the structural reason the online product looks the way it does. The Department of Internal Affairs is the regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the betting prohibition.

The online casino market is a different regime. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 licenses online casino gambling; TAB New Zealand is among the operators entitled to apply for a casino licence. The casino licence is not a betting licence. A reader who wants to bet on the All Blacks or the NRL is in the TAB NZ regime; a reader who wants to play a slot machine is in the casino regime. The two are separate permits with separate rules, and the line must not blur.

For a Kiwi punter who is used to a market of many brands, the practical shape of the law is the rest of the story. New Zealand does not geo-block offshore websites — there is no ISP-level filter the way the United Kingdom has — but it puts liability on the offshore operator. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA; no published penalty for a player was found. The law targets the operator; the Department of Internal Affairs warns the player about the risks. A punt with an offshore brand from inside New Zealand is an offshore punt in the eyes of every New Zealand protection: no deposit limits under New Zealand rules, no New Zealand exclusion register, no New Zealand complaint route.

Legality and enforcement: who is allowed, who is not

The legal position is binary at the operator level. TAB NZ — through TAB and Betcha — may take bets from people in New Zealand. Everyone else, in the strict legal reading of the law, may not. The Department of Internal Affairs treats taking a bet from a person in New Zealand as the trigger. An operator based in Curaçao, Anjouan, the Tobique Gaming Commission jurisdiction, the Isle of Man or Malta is in the same New Zealand position: no right to serve the market.

The offshore side of the field is shaped by the same rule. Alawin, Rooster, Winz, BillyBets, Glorion, Roobet, Rabona and Millioner are all offshore in the New Zealand sense. None of them may lawfully serve a person in New Zealand. Most of them name a non-New Zealand licence of some kind; a Curaçao licence or an Anjouan licence or a Tobique licence is not a New Zealand licence, and the Department of Internal Affairs treats a service to a New Zealand customer as a breach of section 74AAA. There is no published prosecution of an offshore bookmaker for that breach, and the penalty for breaching section 74AAA is not stated in the section, so the page records the prohibition without forecasting an enforcement wave.

What is published is the Department of Internal Affairs’s standing warning to players. Overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay out large wins. The warning is the regulator’s own framing of the cost of the offshore path.

Responsible gambling: the tools that follow the licence

The age for TAB NZ betting is 18. Betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Land-based casinos in New Zealand are 20; the page never merges the two — a casino age is not a betting age. Opening a TAB NZ account requires a verified New Zealand address and ID. The verification is what makes the safer-gambling tools workable, because the tools only apply to an account the operator can identify and reach.

TAB NZ publishes three safer-gambling tools in its app: deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. A deposit limit caps how much can be loaded into the account in a chosen period. A time-out suspends the account for a chosen window. A self-exclusion closes the account for a longer window and bars the punter from reopening. Because TAB and Betcha are one operator group, an exclusion set on one applies across both. TAB NZ also publishes the free New Zealand Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655, text 8006) and Safer Gambling Aotearoa as the help lines a punter in trouble can ring.

TAB NZ pays a Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74%, in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. The levy funds treatment and harm-minimisation work. Offshore brands pay no Problem Gambling Levy to New Zealand. The levy is not a tax on the punter; it is an operator-level charge. Its existence is a marker of where the harm-minimisation framework sits.

There is no single national online-betting exclusion register. The register that the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will create is a casino register, not a betting register. A self-excluded TAB punter is excluded at TAB and Betcha; an exclusion does not bind an offshore brand the punter also uses. A punter who wants a register-level exclusion has to use the casino regime when it comes into force.

Mobile and app: what a Kiwi punter does on a phone

Most New Zealand punters bet on a phone. TAB NZ’s app — published as “TAB – Racing & Sports Betting” by New Zealand Racing Board and on the App Store since 8 September 2014 — is the central app for the lawful market. It carries horse and harness racing, rugby union and rugby league, and other sports, with pre-match and live markets, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, Trackside live race streaming, in-app betting, and a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals. The 17+ App Store rating sits next to the 18+ statutory minimum.

Betcha’s app is the second lawful option. Published by Entain New Zealand Limited and first released on 6 August 2024, Betcha is app-first by design. It carries horse, greyhound and harness racing, rugby, NRL, MMA/UFC, NBA, NFL, tennis, cricket, football, motorsports and esports. The app pairs the betting slip with Trackside live race streaming in a single window, and the wallet sits behind the same identity checks as TAB.

The offshore brands each have their own app footprint. Rooster, Winz, BillyBets, Glorion, Roobet, Rabona, Millioner and Alawin publish mobile apps or mobile-optimised sites; the user experience varies. A New Zealand punter who installs an offshore app does so at the loss of every New Zealand protection, and the app is not a path back into the New Zealand regime.

The math behind the price: what every odds line carries

Every odds line on a bookmaker’s site carries the same shape. The price the bookmaker posts is built from two numbers: the true chance of the outcome and the bookmaker’s margin. A punter who reads only the price reads only one number. A punter who reads the margin reads the actual cost of betting on that market.

Take an illustrative two-way market priced at 1.90 on each side. The fair payout share — what the bookmaker returns if the prices summed to a perfect book — is the sum of the inverse odds across all outcomes: 1 / 1.90 + 1 / 1.90 = 1.053, so the fair share is 1 ÷ 1.053, or about 95.0%. The bookmaker’s margin is 1 minus the payout share, or about 5.0%. The same five-point margin is what a punter pays on every dollar of stake, regardless of which side wins.

The 5% figure is the price the market charges for being able to bet at all. A 1.85 / 1.85 line carries a margin closer to 8%; a 1.95 / 1.95 line carries a margin closer to 2.5%. A 1X2 market on a Premier League match is a different margin from the top-four outright; a Same Game Multi on an NRL match is yet another margin again. Reading the margin first is the habit that prevents a punt from being a guess.

A “top bet” is the bet whose price meets a stated probability test. The math is the only honest forecaster.

Frequently asked questions

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

TAB NZ, through its two online brands TAB and Betcha, is the only provider lawfully allowed to take racing and sports bets from people in New Zealand. Every other brand operating in the New Zealand market is doing so without a New Zealand licence.

How is the return on a bet worked out from the stake and the odds?

The return on a winning bet is the stake multiplied by the decimal odds. A NZ$10 stake at odds of 2.10 returns NZ$21, of which NZ$11 is net. The same calculation applies to a combination bet — a Same Game Multi or a multi across events — where the odds of the legs multiply into one price before being applied to the stake.

What is the bookmaker’s margin and how can it be seen in the odds?

The bookmaker’s margin is the share of every dollar staked that the bookmaker keeps on average across a market. It is the inverse of the payout share: sum the inverse of the decimal odds across all outcomes, take the reciprocal, and subtract from 1. An illustrative 1.90 / 1.90 line carries about a 5% margin; a 1.85 / 1.85 line carries closer to 8%; a 1.95 / 1.95 line carries closer to 2.5%.

What does a player lose by betting with a bookmaker that has no New Zealand licence?

A player loses the New Zealand regulator’s complaint route, the New Zealand safer-gambling tools (deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion as operator-level features), and the protection of a New Zealand identity check. The Department of Internal Affairs warns that overseas operators may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins, and there is no New Zealand exclusion register that binds an offshore brand. The operator is on the wrong side of section 74AAA; the player is not convicted by section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003.

From what age can bets be placed with TAB NZ, and what is checked when opening an account?

Bets may be placed with TAB NZ from age 18; betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Opening a TAB NZ account requires a verified New Zealand address and ID, which is what makes the safer-gambling tools workable. The App Store rating of 17+ is a content guideline, not the betting age.

Are betting winnings taxed in New Zealand?

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 person who bets as a business is a different case. Operator side: TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74%, and overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay online gambling duty (12% of profits since 1 July 2024, 16% from 1 January 2027), though payment of duty does not make an offer lawful in New Zealand.

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